Iowa Caucus

Hal writes:

This evening my colleague Trapper and I travelled across the border into Iowa to observe a caucus. Four years ago I was an Iowa resident and experienced my first caucus, but was a mere observer this year. Now, keep in mind, that the thoughts accompanied by photos are based off of my previous caucus and are posted prior to any results being posted through the media.

Now, regardless of your political affiliation, you should know that the Republican process is a closed door, secret ballot process, so for Trapper and I to actually observe a caucus we attended a Democratic precinct.

Here is me by my sign in the "media" area. Trapper and I were among a handful in a corner reserved for media or other ineligible to caucus (under the age of 18, out of state, etc.).

Here is the registration table. We were in the ballroom in the student center at a Catholic College (hence the crosses that you may periodically see in the background). Outside the door were people making last minute appeals (and handing out stickers) for their candidate of choice.

The population at the caucus was a mix of college students (this being a college campus) and then older residents for the surrounding area (mostly 50+ years old).

Below is a picture of the empty seats. You can see in the background some political posters where later in the evening supporters will stand to support their candidate. The room was in alphabetical order, so you can see Biden signs to the left and Clinton signs to the right. Each candidate had a single sign with their name on it, but supporters came in early to add signage. (Well, except for Kucinich, who did not get a lot of support, but I'll get to his group later.)

The caucus was called to order by the Temporary chair. I was really unimpressed by the manner in which it started. With a large number of college students registering late and not paying attention, you couldn't hear the Chair. He explained the caucus rules and then read one page letters from each candidate, but nobody could here them. The "Millennials" (as current college students are known as) came late, had to do day of registration because they didn't register ahead of time, and were talking to each other and on their cell phones while the chair was speaking. The older population simply sat and pretended to pay attention, but nobody could hear. The chair weakly asked for order a couple of times to no avail.

Here is the group of late arrivals quickly registering. The doors were closed at a certain time and then the division of caucus goers began. People who arrive after the doors were closed (again, Millennials) had to stand in my area and could not participated.

Here are people not paying attention to the chair. He did get their attention of the doors were closed and elected himself (without objection) as the Permanent Chair. Also, it didn't help that he was chomping on gum while he spoke.

After getting the groups attention, he asked if everyone knew what to do next (since he just read the entire process) to which the group replied "no". So then he briefly explained that it was time to divide into groups and explained the math process to elect the seven delegates from the group. The picture below was the caucus agenda and the explanation of Caucus Mathematics.

And now, let's start the fun! The 278 participants went to stand by their candidates sign (or the "uncommitted" sign). To be a viable candidate, 15% (in this case, 42 people) were needed to be with a candidate. If after the first round a group did not have 42, they would be considered not to be viable and would have to realign with another group.

Here is a picture of the few Richardson supports. To the right, one of two in the uncommitted group (I was surprised there was not more in this group). When the Richardson group saw that they were not viable, they tried to convince the Obama group to lend them a few people so that they could be viable after the first round and then they would align with Obama in the second round. When that deal did not go through, they then spoke with the Biden group, also no viable at the time, to see if they could combine for either candidate.

The Obama group had a large gathering to begin with. Here they are gathering in one corner. I would say that 90% of the college students went to this group. This group had 136 supporters after the first count.

Here is the Edwards group. (Insert some joke about the age different (and how well they arranged their chairs) compared to the Obama group here.) At the first count they had 47 supporters, just slightly above the 42 needed to be viable.

Clinton's corner was filled with largely female supporters. Similar to Edwards, the group was just barely viable, and had 48 supporters at first count. I heard an upset Clinton supporter calling into the Clinton Iowa headquarters very upset that the group was barley viable.

The sullen group in the back are the five Kucinich supports (without any stickers or signs). The the first vocal vote for each candidate was announced, the spokesperson for the group announced that there were "five geniuses" in the group. It got a laugh, but unfortunately for those students who were smarter than the other 273 people, their votes counted the same as everyone else.

After the first count, only Edwards, Clinton, and Obama were viable. At this point, those groups could send people to the Biden, Dodd (well, he didn't have a single supporter), Gravel (again, no supporters), Kuchinich, Richardson, or uncommitted groups to convince them to switch. Once candidate groups were considered to be not viable after the first round, they could not stay in that group. Supporters had to either go with one of the viable groups or go to uncommitted. Here is the "leader" of the Biden group trying to convince the group to move together as supporters from the other group come to make their cases.

The photo below is of the Obama group during the second and final vote. There were so many in the corner they had to do the "keep your hand up until you're counted" method. In the end it was 163 supporters (4 delegate votes) for Obama, 61 supporters (2 delegate votes) for Edwards, and 51 supporters (1 delegate vote) for Clinton.

Here are three that remained uncommitted at the end of the caucus. Who could them be calling? Just a friendly phone call or checking in with friends at other precincts? Are they calling campaign headquarters to let them know how it went?

The evening continued with election of delegates, resolution and platform discussions, and other official business. Or so was posted on the agenda, I didn't stay for that fun. Unfortunately, this ends my campaign coverage as I have to start work on Monday and I am not able to travel to New Hampshire to continue my observations.