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After hearing many exhortations to be a good citizen who participates, and because I am of an age where I am supposed to care about my blood pressure and President Bush was holding a live press conference on TV that Tuesday night, I ventured to the Chaffee County Precinct 2 Democratic Caucus last week.
Getting there was easy, since it was across the street. All the precincts from the southern half of the county met there; the northern precincts gathered in Buena Vista.
One virtue of the caucus system quickly became apparent; with one exception, the only candidates there were those seeking county office. The exception was a candidate for the state House of Representatives who lives here.
That's a virtue because it means that candidates can't do it all themselves, or just buy TV advertising. To be heard at the caucuses, they need supporters to speak for them, which means they need some grassroots organization in every neighborhood. Some politics stays retail, even in an age of wholesale media campaigning.
Plus, caucuses are a good place for the great American sport of arguing about politics. Before last week, the last one I attended was in 1996. There I got to argue with another attendee, a school counselor, about vouchers; he wanted us all to support a resolution opposing them, while I was adamant in insisting that they deserved a fair trial, and that the Democratic Party needed to realize that there are a lot more parents than teachers in this country, and appealing to parents is going to win more elections than dancing to the tune of the teachers' union.
Back then we also argued about whom to support in the primary for a seat in the state House of Representatives -- Carl Miller of Leadville or Jim Gelwicks of Gunnison.
In 1996, we did agree unanimously to support a resolution calling for the impeachment of Gov. Roy Romer for supporting, in violation of the state constitution, the merger of the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads. Even George Bush, as governor of Texas, opposed that merger.
Not that our resolution went anywhere, but it was fun. Last week's caucus started pleasantly enough.
First we sat in a big group. County Chairman Jerry
Mallet advised us to go on a No-CARB diet
in 2004;
CARB stood for Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, and
Bush.
Several people spoke on behalf of candidates. We were reminded that Mike Miles remains a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate, and so Ken Salazar's nomination is not a done deal. A hot primary might be good for the party, I thought, since the impending Schaffer-Coors battle will give the Republicans a lot of publicity, keeping Democrats out of the news unless there's some newsworthy competition of their own.
It appears we will have a primary for the state house of representatives. In the gerrymandering after the 2000 census, the legislature took us out of Democrat Carl Miller's district, and put us in Republican Lola Spradley's.
She's term-limited, so the seat is open this year. One candidate is Emily Tracy of Cañon City, who ran in 2002. She served on the city council there and she has a good grasp of this area's issues, which she expresses clearly. I'll be glad to vote for her.
The other is Jaime Lewis, former mayor of Salida and former county party chairman. He resigned both positions before his term ended, which makes me wonder how long he would stay in the legislature if he were elected.
Besides, when he was mayor, he proposed a municipal
version of an Official Secrets Act.
Any citizen who
possessed any piece of paper that the mayor had stamped
secret
or confidential
would be guilty of a
crime. That's a good way to insure that he will never again
get my vote.
We also heard from supporters of Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich, who agreed their candidates were out of the running, but there was still a chance of influencing the party platform by sending Dean and Kucinich delegates to the county assembly on April 24, who could then send people to the state convention in Pueblo on May 22, who would then help write the platform at the national convention in Boston July 26-29.
Party platforms can provide entertainment, but that's
about the size of it. Nobody pays attention to them,
especially after the election. For proof, note that the
2000 Republican platform said that in the Middle East,
we seek to promote and maintain peace.
Nonetheless, the Kucinich supporters were intent on getting delegates to the county assembly, and from what I could gather, they managed pretty well. I admired their energy; I just wish they would apply it to something that mattered, rather than a platform.
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