Johnson County Republican Convention

Last Saturday I went to the Johnson County Republican Convention as an alternate delegate for my precinct. Since the drunk guy didn't make it (see caucus posting) I became an official delegate and was able to vote. There were two main parts to the convention--one was to vote for delegates to go to the district and state conventions, the other to vote on any amendments to the platform and approve the platform.

As I understood it, voting on delegates for district/state conventions was normally a very mundane, routine task, however, this year it was a very heated battle that I truly enjoyed watching! The issue was that in years past, there had never been enough delegates to fill the 78 slots at district/state. If that's the case, the county republican party has to pay the $40 fee per slot that the delegate normally pays. This takes money away from the party, thus taking money away from local republican candidates. So this year the county republican party advertised that even if you weren't a county delegate, that you could become a district/state delegate. I'm not sure if that was a new rule or one that was not widely known. They asked each presidential candidate campaign to send a list of names of people who were interested in going to the district/state convention. I got an e-mail from the Romney campaign, asking me if I was interested, but because I was going to be at the convention I didn't respond.

Then at the county convention, they asked for all county delegates who were interested, to write their names on a piece of paper. The tricky part was that when they posted the names of those who were selected by the "nominating committee" to be district/state delegates, a lot of the county delegates were not on the list because there weren't enough slots for everyone, which had never happened before (usually they were begging people). The county delegates who were left off the list got upset, stating that they showed up to the county convention and that they should have priority over those who didn't. Anyways, after two hours of amendments to the list (everything was done using Parliamentary Procedure, which was fun since I'd competed in that in high school) and debate, the chair decided to put the issue on the table and move on to the platform. The convention was supposed to last from 9-1 but because of the problems with the list, we were only halfway through the platform amendments when I had to leave around 1:30pm. I was sad to have to leave early because I found it really interesting.

I still don't know if I'm a delegate or an alternate delegate--I think if I had responded to the Romney e-mail I would have definitely had a delegate spot, but I don't really mind either way. It was fun to be a part of the process and I am looking forward to the District Convention on April 19th.