Centerfield

Texas County Convention HELL, Part III And, Yes, Final

About 10 minutes after the signs apparently dooming my precinct to eternal nonservice went up, another window opened just behind me. They started with somebody in my precinct (!!!), and calls went out that they were going to do the whole precinct right then. I slowly stuffed my jaw back up near where it belongs. You know, when this kind of thing happens in fiction, my disbelief comes way unstuck, and I wish the author was around to look over my glasses at. Fifteen minutes later, we were all headed back for our, er, home on the floor.

When I got back, I took my turn pushing the kid around the floor. HE got to eat - we were afraid he'd be shy of using his new eating-solids skill. He's been eating Cheerios. But it's alot easier to bring enough food to feed a baby than two adults.

When everybody was finally done upgrading (another hour or so), a handful of precincts with over-high delegate numbers had to shed extra delegates (not us).

Then came the credential committee reports. I'd seen typed-up reports on every challenge while in the credential committee digs, no doubt in case of lawsuits, and was afraid the entire things would be read. They just read an officialese summary (whew!). That's when they said a GOP caucus chief had been tossed out of the convention (!). They didn't say how they'd caught him.

Finally came the good part. Voting-time! We got together in precincts, started talking, and then had our conversations stopped in their tracks by the Railroad Commissioner (the office is about oil, not railroads...) candidates saying their spiels over the speakers. They were awfully slow to take the hints of zillions of people booing and yelling and waving. FINALLY they let us talk.

We immediately nominated every delegate from our precinct for state delegate, so we'd all have a (equal) chance of being alternates to state. Then our chair moved for the Clinton candidates to be voted on first, so we could use their voting pattern to maximize our delegate wins. The delegates with the most votes would become state delegates. We had five state delegates and two alternates to vote on. The Clinton delegates all bloc-voted for one guy, the long-term precinct chair (I guess he figured they didn't have enough delegates present to win more than one seat under the circumstances). We divvied up our votes up three ways with four votes each, except for one vote cast for one person.

The precinct failed Counting 101. We kept coming up with different number of vote totals and counted delegates. It took three times before we finally got it right.

That meant 4 Obama votes and 1 Clinton vote, in a precinct where the original primary and caucus results had been both about 2:1 Obama:Clinton. The caucus state delegate allotment results for Austin were 313:144. There are more at-large delegates that have yet to be selected, with diversity goals in mind. Texas' state delegate caucuses overall seem to be almost 56% Obama, while I believe the original guess from caucus results was closer to even.

Finally, came the lottery for alternate. The rules said any equal system could be used. I was afraid we'd be tossing a coin a bunch and be there forever, but the old hand knew better and had brought a deck of cards. I would've just numbered the delegates and pulled two cards to choose the two positions, but the way he chose was probabaly more fun - we all drew cards, and the highest two cards got to go be alternates. It came to one of each of us.

The permanent precinct chair we elected was a perennial, and a Clinton supporter. But he treated everybody utterly fairly, and was a class act, and a good man to deal with. If everybody involved in politics was like that, our democracy would be tons safer and pleasanter. I was proud of my precinct for being classy in the caucus, and now I'm even prouder of it for continuing that classiness in the county convention. We supported each other, right across the lines.

And the Profesora, the kid, and I were too tired and hungry to even think about the after party, Or cooking. We went home and got two Singapore Noodles dishes from Fire Bowl on the way, which are comfort itself. Then we slept eleven hours.