Caucusing

Bruce decided to go to the Republican caucus with me last night--he took a quiz that tells you which candidate you are most closely aligned with and he was most closely aligned with Republican candidates. It was a little disappointing for him, since the Democratic caucus is more interesting. You actually stand in groups based on who you support (undecided also in a group) and if your candidate does not have more than 15 percent of the crowd, you have to break up and join another candidate's group. All the other groups are trying to get you to join their group. The Republican caucus is shorter, but not as exciting. There's a time to make statements for your candidate and try to sway people, but then you just have a normal paper vote.

The Lone Tree caucuses were held at the Lone Tree high school. We put the kids in the double stroller and went in the main entrance and ran into a huge wall of people completely blocking off the hallway who, we found out, were Democrats trying to sign in. Their caucus started a half hour earlier so it was surprising they were still trying to get people in the door. It was quite a feat to wade through everyone with the huge stroller, especially when they didn't understand that we were trying to go through the crowd, not cut in line. Then it was another adventure trying to find an elevator to get to the second floor.

We finally made it and realized pretty soon that there are ALOT more Democrats than Republicans in Lone Tree. There were a total of 44 people in the small classroom we were in and I'd guess probably 200 downstairs at the Democratic caucus. The moderator said there were only 6 who showed up at the last caucus in 2000. I don't know if Bruce would classify this as interesting or annoying, but there was a youngish redneck who had obviously had a couple of beers before he showed up who was really, to put it nicely, very vocal during the whole process.

Another part of the caucus is voting for people to be on the central committee and to be county delegates. They needed 3 people for each and you were supposed to nominate people. Well, this guy nominated himself for both and managed to get himself on both (mainly because no one else wanted to do it) but let's say the 'ayes' weren't nearly as loud for him as the other nominees, though no one was brave enough to say 'nay.' I was definitely tempted.

For our little crowd of 44, Fred Thompson won with Mitt Romney coming in second.