Democratic 11th LD Caucus, Seattle, WA - April 2008.
I recently participated in my second caucus, this one being at
the Legislative District (LD) level in
| On the Wednesday before the caucus, I sent out my campaign speech. I was running to be elected as Delegate for the Congressional District (CD) level. The night before, I printed up a bunch of cards I was going to hand out during the caucus… how else was I going to get some sort of name recognition, right? |  |
I showed up to my caucus a little early (just after 8:30AM). The day after I sent out my speech to various online groups, the credentials chair from my LD mentioned that they were going to be short on people working the sign-in tables, and she asked if I could help out. I showed up and was quickly drafted to an empty table. The sign-in process was briefly explained to me and I began signing people in.. It was already a rough morning… my immune system finally caved in to my girlfriend’s cold the night before, and I only survived the day with a steady stream of DayQuil flowing through my system.
| The sign-in process started relatively smoothly. People from my LD began to trickle in… which soon felt like a storm. I signed people in, Delegates got their cards, and off they went to get their voting credentials. Alternates were told to wait for all of the Delegates to be seated, then we’d see which one of the Alternates would get in. This whole process took a lot longer than I expected. The sign-in process was closed, and I believe it was around 1PM before the people in charge knew which Alternates would be seated. They did an overwhelming amount of work to accomplish this, kudos to them. I believe there were about a thousand delegates attending that day. |
 Reviewing the sign-ins |
| After this process was completed, I ventured off to do my serious campaigning. I handed my campaign card out to people, who were generally pretty receptive. Some were impressed that I actually took the time to design something. Others had questions on why I thought I’d make a good delegate, and some seemed impressed I talked to them. What impressed me the most was the small group of people who actually remembered me from the speech I sent out a few days prior to the event. |  Other people running for Delegate |
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I was doing my campaigning in between speeches that were
being given. The
most notable speakers were Helen Howell, an Obama supporter, and
a |
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My butt was saved by the small amount of campaigning I was able to do. The next part of the process wasn’t something I remembered from the rules booklet; all of the rules get overwhelming and lost when the whole process is new to you. There was a section that covered the scenario where tons of people were vying for Delegate spots. A rapid-runoff was voted on and approved during the caucus. Our LD had 50 or so people running for Delegate. Due to my own confusion of the rules, I had thought that Delegates would be able to give a three-minute speech as part of their campaign. It turns out that the three-minute-rule was for people running for Permanent Chair, not Delegate. The day was running late enough already, nobody wanted to horribly draw out the length of the speech process.
The crowd voted on a measure that’d set up a process to weed down the number of people to 20 (10 males, 10 females), and each of them could give a one-minute speech. The crowd of voters were given one blue dot sticker and one red dot sticker (blue for males, red for females). The voters would take their dots and place it on whoever’s application they liked the best. Whichever applications were in the top 10 for each gender would be selected for speeches. After a fairly-brief selection process, I had made the cut!
Next, the speeches: These were all done by standing in front of the crowd and shouting into a megaphone. The women were to go first, which was a relief. I had to trim my speech down, and I had to do it quickly. My speech would have taken up the original three minutes that I had allotted; my fault for confusing the rules. I somehow managed to cut most of the fat from my speech, but unfortunately, I didn’t get to pay much attention to most of the women on stage. The men were now up and I was #2 in line.
Those of you who know me probably wouldn’t think of me as a public speaker. Hell, last time I had to talk in front of any crowd was in high school in front of my creative writing class... this group was a hell of a lot bigger. Somehow, I buried my nervousness and anxiety for a minute and gave my speech. My voice was harsh, because of my cold, I was probably shaking a bit, and I spoke with the megaphone in one hand and the gutted text of the speech in the other. I gave the speech, but didn’t quite finish. When my time was called, I wrapped up my sentence, repeated my name, and got off the stage.
| After my speech was done, some people came up to me and told me how brave I was, speaking truth to power, saying what I said. Honestly, I have no idea how I did, but I didn’t think it was good enough. The vote tallies took a long time (imagine counting ballots where each sheet includes 12 names). My name wasn’t amongst the 6 males that were selected. |
 Tallying votes |
At first, the Alternates up for election were going to be the people that survived the run-off, but didn’t make the delegate selection. A couple of people were nominated to the male list, which made for a total of 6 people. The crowd thinned as tired delegates left to go home. A smaller amount of people voted on the alternates. My name was called and I officially became an Alternate after filling out some paperwork.
This caucus was definitely a learning experience for me. I’m still a little bummed out that I wasn’t elected a delegate, but the people selected were definitely good ones. There are many reasons I can think of that affected me: I worked the sign-in booth for too long instead of campaigning, my cold (I was lucky… lost my voice the next day), my lack of public speaking skills, I’m not a union member, I’m a new democrat, having to gut my speech at the last minute, my lack of campaign experience, etc. All of those are valid reasons, but when it all comes down to it, I chalk it all up to a great learning experience. The day finally ended around 5PM.
I am an Alternate who stands a chance of getting seated at the CD caucus (not a great one, but there’s still a chance). I will not be discouraged for long… I’ll still find a way to make a difference and this not-quite-winning-experience won’t discourage me from participating in the future. The final results for the 11th LD, CD 7: Obama 12, Clinton 4. Full results from my LD: Obama 26, Clinton 10. Obama will win this election and the political landscape will be shaken up.
Robert Kangas
11th LD, WA
PS: Please excuse any inaccuracies / spelling or grammar mistakes. I’m still getting over the cold from hell and I have the attention span of a squirrel. Also, as you’ll see from the included photos, Hillary supporters went a little too far in canvassing the site with her posters. Really, on the bathroom doors? That’s a name association I wouldn’t want! J Also, some corrections have been made to improve the accuracy of this post. I confused the rules in some spots, these have been fixed.
Links:
 Photo Gallery |
Original campaign speech | 11th LD Democrats site |
| Gutted speech |