Nevada Caucusing

This has to be heartening for Nevada Dems–from the caucuses I observed this morning, they are far more organized than their Republican counterparts.

I’m in Reno, and have had the chance to observe both processes. First off for the Republicans–those results you are seeing are not the actual delegates committed to candidates, because they weren’t selecting delegates by candidate. They did, however, have a straw poll at the end of the caucus where they could register their preference for President. This is where things got very confusing at the caucus–in some precincts, the candidates for delegate were asked to state their presidential candidate preference, and in some they weren’t. In some precinct meetings they started out with a show of hands for each candidate, and in some they didn’t talk about the candidates at all. What was most prevalent among the Republicans I saw was the widespread look of confusion on people’s faces as they tried to navigate the process.

That could have been a function of venue as well as lack of experience and a bunch of confusing rules. There were a couple dozen precincts meeting in a grade school gym, with people crowded into the bleachers, their precinct captains trying to shout directions above the din of all the other precinct captains shouting above the din. The confusion, the aforementioned din, the fact that they weren’t actually selecting delegates for candidates directly, made more than a few folks a little cranky. As an observer, I wasn’t supposed to talk with anybody, but I spent the hour circulating and eavesdropping on the proceedings.  I did make the mistake of commenting to one group of three in a precinct that it must have been a lot easier to do the math. I was then subjected to a somewhat racist rant about the neighborhood that the three resided in and why they were the only residents who showed, and I quickly moved on. Fortunately, not all attendees lived up to my worst expectations of Republicans.

What I saw was very few people speaking passionately for any candidate, which they were given the opportunity to do ahead of the straw poll vote. With the exception one McCain guy and a few Paul supporters, it was a very business-like crowd there to do their thing and move on. Turnout seemed good in the venue I observed, but was light overall in the state–somewhere around 43,000, about 11% of registered Republicans. Who was motivated to turn out in this race? It’s looking like it was Mormon voters. The state has about a 7.4% Mormon population, but Mormons comprised nearly a quarter of caucus attendees and 94% of [those participating went for] Romney’s vote. The rest probably came from the fact that he’s been the only candidate to come to the state to campaign. The only other candidate to spend any effort in Nevada was Ron Paul, whose efforts have officially paid off and given him the number two spot.

Speaking of Ron Paul, at the Democratic caucus that followed right on the heels of the Republicans, I met a woman who had caucused with the Republicans and cast her straw ballot for Paul, even though she “didn’t know much about him.” She then hung around waiting for the Dems to show up, and re-registered to caucus with the Democrats, where she planned to stay for the general election. Republicans had to register a month ago in order to participate, but the Democrats allowed on the spot registration for their caucus today.

Like the prototypical Western ticket-splitting voter, the woman I talked to was a registered Republican who voted all over the spectrum, depending on who appealed to her. Today, she started out thinking she’d go with Obama because she’d gotten a call from the Obama campaign inviting her to caucus. But once she got there, she decided she was really undecided, so she started out with them, and eventually ended up with Edwards, to help him reach viability.

The Democrats had record turnout today, with the state Democrats reporting (by e-mail) more than 115,800 voters and nearly a third of all the state’s registered Democrats, where they were expecting somewhere around 70,000. Now how many of those Democratic caucusers were those Republicans who switched to participate, we don’t know yet. I’m really curious to see those numbers. The woman I spoke to wasn’t doing it out of any kind of mischief, she wanted to send a message to the Republicans, and her heart was with the Democrats.

The Democratic caucus I watched moved extremely smoothly–the instructions were very clear, there was one person most definitely in charge who was able to answer all of the participants’ questions, and everyone behaved exceedingly well. Our group, in Washoe County which was an Obama stronghold, gave four delegates to Obama, three to Clinton, and one to Edwards. The Republican could have learned something from them in how to make a caucus work.

And let me just add this, to answer the idiotic Andrea Mitchell and Howard Fineman who are doing their damnedest to spin this contest as either a war of the races–Hispanic vs. African American–or a looming civil war among the Democrats, just shut up. These were committed Democrats (and new Demcorats), all getting along remarkably well (posters at Daily Kos could take a lesson from them, ahem) and showing up in record numbers to prove how committed they are to taking their country back.

The biggest cheer of the day did not come when the final delegate count was announced–it came when the precinct captain announced that the Democrats were on the way to taking back the White House and taking the country back from the party of George Bush. Make no mistake, the people who showed up to caucus in Reno today were all about the Democratic party winning in November.

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