I just got home from my caucus in South King County, a zone of relatively small and less educated suburbs of Seattle. This area is purply mauve — our Congressional rep for several terms has been “moderate” Republican Dave Reichert, former King Country Sheriff. Sometimes he doesn’t get Dem opponents. People in my area tend to be more conventional than those big-city folks in Seattle. (I am the exception, of course; I live here not because I feel like it’s a good “fit” personality-wise, but because I like grass and trees.)
So I didn’t go into the caucus particularly optimistic for my man Bernie’s chances at my caucus site.
I arrived at 9:00, an hour before the official start time of 10:00. At that time there were about 100 people there representing a couple dozen or so precincts. As far as I could tell from conversations, buttons, t-shirts, stickers, and signs, it didn’t appear that there were any Clinton supporters among that number. There were at least half a dozen Bernie Campaign “Site Leaders” — so many that, although I had signed up to be a Site Leader, I demoted myself to a Bernie Precinct Captain. Much lower stress level! :-)
For a long time, there was me and one other person — a millennial guy — at our precinct table. We talked for a while about the problems in our country and how Bernie is the best choice to solve them. Eventually we were joined by 3 middle-aged women who I was sure would be Hillary supporters; they had a look and style that I tend to associate with Hillary. Turned out when we actually got to looking at preferences, two of them were for Bernie — books, covers, judging, got it!
Two couples showed up closer to the starting time, one young & tattooed, the other middle-aged and anxious to get ‘er done and get home, because their son is in town for the first time in a couple years. Based on the final count, both couples must have been Bernie supporters. At the time the official proceedings started and throughout most of the discussion, everyone at our table was white. Women were slightly overrepresented, and there were a couple of people with physical disabilities.
Before the precinct-level activities started, we had an introductory speech from the party honcho guy, and he also read letters from Governor Inslee and Dem Congressman Adam Smith (who represents a small number of the people who were there). Lots of party rah-rah about how we like justice and inclusiveness. Got everybody feeling happy and cooperative.
Once we got going with the precinct proceedings, I found out why all the early arrivers were Berners: the Hillaryites had gotten their ballots online and sent them in ahead. Our precinct had about the same number of online ballots as live bodies, and the clear majority of online ballots were for Hillary.
There was no PCO for our precinct, so we chose a caucus chair by acclamation — she happened to be the only Clinton supporter present, but none of us Bernie supporters cared because she seemed knowledgeable and trustworthy. I was sitting next to her, so I could see all the paperwork at the same time she was seeing it, but I wasn’t concerned about anything untoward happening.
I volunteered to be the person who does the vote tallying and delegate calculations, because I get math (was a math teacher for almost a decade), and I wanted to make sure the calculations got done correctly.
We didn’t really engage in debate, because everyone said their minds were completely made up and not subject to persuasion. Our initial numbers were 10 votes for Bernie, 6 for Hillary (including the online votes). After tallying votes, as we started the delegate selection process, we were joined by another Clinton supporter — which was very lucky for Hillary, because the caucus chair wasn’t able to commit to the delegate schedule, so if the second supporter hadn’t showed up, Hillary would have had one less delegate than she is entitled to at the next level of caucuses. The newcomer was a youngish African-American woman, and she also said her mind was completely made up.
The final vote in our caucus was 10-7 Bernie, and the delegate count was Bernie 2, Hillary 1. The young couple stepped up to be delegates, and I took on the alternate role.
It was all very neighborly and cordial.
Based on my conversation with a couple of the Site Leaders after everything was over, it appears that the margin for the overall site was somewhere between 2 to 1 Bernie and 3 to 2 Bernie, but that’s just eyeballing it, not official numbers.