Washblog

A little over a month ago I had no idea how to answer that question, and actually today I am not sure I can give a straight answer. At the least I have an idea of what it means now, after having spent a Saturday afternoon in the lunchroom at Discovery Elementary School on the Sammamish Plateau in the 5th Legislative District, with nearly 300 republicans.

What I expected versus what actually happened are two very different stories. What was originally a very unclear race for the republican nomination before Super Tuesday became quite clear by the time our state's caucus was to take place. I had expected/hoped to cover a caucus where the battle lines would be drawn, heated debates over candidates would take place, and people would form unruly mobs in support of their candidate, wrestling matches would be optional, but encouraged. I wanted to see the undecided be pulled in different directions amid shouts and jeers, like a choosing a team on a playground of 8-year-olds.

Unfortunately none of what I had expected really happened; needless to say I was slightly disappointed. The closest I could hear to any kind of heated debate was over whether our troops should remain in Iraq. Instead the republicans of the Sammamish plateau were orderly, extremely efficient, polite and helpful, which in reality made my job much easier. The crowd was in place just after 1:00, was given instructions on how to fill out their bubble sheets pertaining to their presidential preference and stances on the major issues, then broke into precinct groups, filled out the sheets and bounced. No more than a two hour ordeal.

The closest thing to a hiccup this caucus had was that about 20 - 30 people had no clue what there precinct number was, and hey I can't name mine, which was disruptive in that they had to use our computer to look up the information, which more than delayed some live posting. Beyond that it was a very smooth function. Like I mentioned earlier, this made covering the caucus just as smooth, as the people were more than happy to talk about politics and be photographed.

On the blogging side of things, with only two people I found it fairly difficult to have a lot of live posting going on. Simply trying to upload pictures and videos was very time consuming, and costly, as you would be missing the live content of the caucus, so we quickly gave up on uploading any kind of multimedia intensive post until caucusing had finished. The best things we could get posted were quick accounts of what was happening, or what stage of the caucus process they were in, with a few quotes. Trying to manage time between the computer and being in the field was the most difficult part of the process, and I think having at least one more person there to help would have been a great addition.

I have to give props to the die-hard who showed up rocking the Fred Thompson pin, he'd been caucusing for years now and was exciting to see young people getting involved in politics. There was also the 18-year old there to support Ron Paul, even when others were knocking Paul, he was happy to engage in the conversation, which is impressive because at one point he was arguing with a 70-year old woman. I also found a fair amount of Mitt Romney supporters; one was whole-heartedly convinced Romney still had a very good shot to win the Republican nomination and that continued support could get him the win.

Although this was no raucous caucus, and I never got to see any Ron Paul inspired rioting, it was pleasantly surprising to see a form of support for almost every candidate whether in or out of the race for the nomination. The caucus was truly grassroots politics, where citizens just got together and talked about the candidates and the issues. While initially I may have been disappointed with the lack of excitement, the caucus proved to be a more than worthwhile learning experience and good practice of journalism in the field.