As a long time commentator, and very rare Diarist, I thought I would share my experience caucusing in Texas this past Tuesday night. First a little background:
I live in Flower Mound, TX, which is in southern Denton County. For those who are not familiar with this area, this is an extremely Republican area. The local congressman, Michael Burgess, normally wins re-election with 70 –75 % of the vote, and I’m sure GW Bush received similar margins in 2000 and 2004. This past Tuesday, there were a total of 54,674 Democratic votes cast in the county, and 38,491 Republican. Those numbers are incredible to me.
I voted early for Obama, and I was excited to attend my first ever caucus. To tell you the truth, in 14 years of voting in Texas, I didn’t even know the Democratic Primary included caucuses until this primary. I convinced my wife to vote and caucus with me for Obama, although she didn’t have a chance to vote early. On election night at around 6:30, half hour before the polls were scheduled to close, we drove up to the smallish Presbyterian Church by our house. There must have been over a thousand people either hanging around waiting for the caucus or in line to vote. I dropped off my wife to get in line to vote, and tried to find a parking spot. Of course, the church lot was full, so people were cutting over to the graveyard attached to the church and trying to find a spot between the grave markers, on the muddy dirt roads going through the graveyard, on the street, anywhere they could find.
I finally found a spot, and hooked up with my wife in line. The line was moving very slowly, but everyone was having a good time checking out all the people, sharing stories about the election, and just being very upbeat. Flower Mound is almost 90 % white, but this crowd looked much more diverse than that. It was all Democratic voters, because in this area the Democratic and Republican voters vote in different locations. At 7:00, there were still quite a few people waiting in line to vote. In fact, my wife didn’t cast her ballot until almost 7:30. By this time, people were trying to get organized for the caucuses, but I would say there were still close to 1000 people still there waiting to participate. They finally starting breaking people into groups by precinct number, and ours was sent to one of the small classrooms within the church.
Of course, the classrooms, hallways, meeting rooms, and offices were all too small to hold all the people crowding around. Everyone was joking that it was only a matter of time before the fire marshall came in and shut the whole thing down. At around 8:00, they finally got all the tables and sign-in sheets in place, and people slowly started to fill in the required info and indicate which candidate they wanted to support. Just as my wife and I almost got to the front of the line to fill in our data, one of the guys running the thing came in and said we all had to vacate the classrooms, since they weren’t part of the contract the county party had with the church for use that night. As voters were wondering what was going to happen next, the people handling the sign in process picked up the 3 tables in our room and took them right outside the door to the playground, and everyone tried to follow while also trying to stay in line. It didn’t get ugly or anything, but people where forceful in trying to get outside and stay in line. For a minute, I thought it might have turned into another Who concert in Cincinnati in 1982 type situation. (All you classic rock fans know what I’m talking about) Fortunately, it didn’t get that bad, and we were able to complete our paperwork and stand once again for Barack Obama. I’m happy to report that my precinct seems to have gone 79% for Obama, 20% Hillary. I think this county as a whole probably will finish close to 60% - 40% in Obama’s favor.
I hope everyone enjoyed my first time caucus story, and thanks for letting me share.