I suggested we divide, despite our not having an additional open classroom. The chair accepted this suggestion and Precinct 13 then went out into the hallway and caucused there. In the binding presidential straw poll, each precinct went approximately 80-40, Obama-Clinton. In other words, 240 or so people had been planned to convene in a high school classroom. Many people were quite unhappy with the poor planning. Most cast their presidential ballots and left. (A huge number, I divine, didn't even come in and vote, discouraged by the traffic and crowds. Many waited lengthily outside their meeting rooms, so mismatched were the rooms to the numbers of participants.) All those who wanted to be delegates to the senate district convention--the next step up--found a slot open. (Precinct 11 had 23 slots for delegates and several went unspoken for.) My daughter cast her first-ever real-world vote, for Barack Obama (as did I) and then left with the masses of frustrated newly-active DFLers.
I tried to help out during the meeting by getting Precinct 13 to convene in the hallway. Many people were really pissed off (sorry Mom) by the disorganization. It was a mess; I really hope our local party learns from tonight. On the positive side, it was great to see so many citizens wanting to get involved; it was great also that the community's diversity was well-represented among the DFL caucus-goers. Precinct 13 had a half-dozen or so Somali high school girls who stayed for the entire caucus--and appeared unflustered by the planning fiasco.
Mayor Hovland spoke to our caucus and was warmly received. Few of the attendees seemed aware of our three congressional candidates. Terri Bonoff was present but I didn't run into her. (Numerous precincts were all caucusing at EPHS, both DFL and Republican.) Maria Ruud and Jerry Pitzrick had nice campaign tables set up in the commons area and were attracting many supporters.
For the CD3 DFL congressional campaigns, the relevant audience has now been drastically winnowed. By Friday the lists will have been tabulated, collated and made available to the campaigns. In the entire congressional district, perhaps 3,000 people will have their names, telephone numbers and email addresses on the list. If you're a delegate expect to receive numerous contacts from the various campaigns. This promises to be fun.
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Hi, Gavin. Just wanted to give you a bit of background on the school situation. Unfortunately, the high school is the only place in the entire senate district big enough to have a senate district caucus there. More on that later.
When planning for the caucus started in December, we'd been told by the State Party to plan on double the 2004 turnout. That would have been 1,600 to 1,800 attendees. When the turnouts in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina came in with record turnouts, we upped our anticipated attendee number from that range to 3,000. And, we had almost 4,000 people show up (compared to just over 1,000 in the RPM caucus).
An additional challenge for us with the high school this year is the fact that the State Legislature didn't pass legislation moving the formal caucus date from the first Tuesday in March to our new first Tuesday in February date. Therefore, the school district wasn't required by law to cancel other events on it's calendar tonight. So, in addition to two caucuses, there were multiple basketball games, a winter play, wrestling matches, gymnastics, drivers' ed, and other events taking place at the same time. We had no control of that.
We looked at holding the caucus at local churches, however, with Ash Wednesday being tomorrow (or actually today as I type this), we weren't welcome in those structures on this night. The hotel in the district isn't large enough to host our 2004 turn out, let alone what happened tonight.
We had double the number of precinct maps as we had in 2004. And, we had 3 computers ready to help people look up their precincts. We had over 45 volunteers to help people find their precinct rooms, something that has never happened here before. We color coded the hallways and provided colored masking tape leading people to their correct hallway. Again, something not done in previous years.
Many in the party were concerned we were spending the money we were to prepare for as large a group as we did. After all, this is Eden Prairie and Minnetonka.
While it was frustrating and a bit chaotic, real momentum toward our candidates and message showed tonight.
So, our apologies for that. And, also our thanks for helping make such a massive turnout happen.
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