The Colorado State Open Thread is published Monday evenings about 7PM or so. It is for people who are in, have passed through or have just heard about Colorado and wish to learn and/or share a bit more about our square state. Feel free to contribute.
I promised you a report about my first exposure to my new county’s caucus that took place last Saturday afternoon. For the last several years, I’ve been in a Denver precinct and we met at Abraham Lincoln High School in their auditorium. There were multiple precincts present, but we had enough people present that we made use of that large space, as well as some tables in the hall outside where campaign literature was spread. This last Saturday, we had four precincts in the middle school gymnasium (the Republicans had the high school) and our precinct had 23 voters present.
We had two hours allotted and our group was the one of the four that took the most time for our session. We started with the Pledge of Allegiance and then moved on to take a preliminary vote to get a sense of the group for who we were there to support. The preliminary vote was 17-6 in favor of Governor Hickenlooper over House Speaker Romanoff. The PCP who was running our meeting was going to move on into a final vote but we asked/insisted/demanded an opportunity to have people who weren’t officially there as representatives of the candidate to speak on behalf of the candidates, to see if we could sway voters to our side. I spoke first about why I was there and voting for Romanoff (he’s more progressive, is knowledgeable and interested in getting mental health provided for people, interested in gun control and is in favor of green energy) and then we had about 5 or so people speak on each side.
When we had pretty much spoken our piece, we held a second, final vote and it came out 19-4 this time, again in favor of Hickenlooper. We again had a bit of discussion time, and the consensus was that Hickenlooper was the most likely to beat Gardner because he was the best known (having been governor), he had won the statewide race for governor twice, and this election was just too important to take a chance on the lesser-known Romanoff, even though people were willing to say they knew there were shortcomings in Hickenlooper and all else being equal, they might prefer Romanoff. For this race, this year, it’s too important to take back the Senate and to defeat Trump and his supporters, so things aren’t equal between the candidates. This discussion is a major bonus of the caucus system, but I do understand how it’s only for those people who can take the time to come, who are willing to speak up and how it’s definitely not for everyone.
We had two delegates that we could elect to county. With the ratio of 19-4, both of the delegates wound up going to Hickenlooper. Even had we managed to keep it 17-6, both would still be awarded to Hickenlooper. I’m disappointed — I think this year we have two candidates who would beat the odious Gardner, but I can understand why people want the candidate that’s the best known and, in their mind, most likely to beat Gardner.
We had one resolution that was debated and accepted for passing on to County. That was to recommend considering alternative voting methods so that people’s second and/or third choice preferences would be able to be considered so that ballots wouldn’t be spoiled the way so many were this year — we had four candidates drop out after so many people had voted in our mail-in election. The key component of the resolution was to say that we did not wish to impose one method of voting, like rank-choice, be the one and only method for allowing for people’s second or third choices to be considered. We wanted the jurisdiction conducting the vote to be the one to determine which preferential treatment they feel is best for their situation.
After that, we elected our precinct committee participants and the the people going to County stayed to fill out paperwork and I chatted for a bit with a new acquaintance, Steve, who’s a Berner, who also voted for Romanoff because of concerns about healthcare (particularly mental health care) and fracking which is a big favorite of the former oilman Hickenlooper. I went out to my car, found out there was a large herd of elk sort of blocking my exit from one side of the parking lot (they were lying down all over the grass and a couple of cars were blocking the exit as they took pictures). It’s nice living in Estes Park.
Please feel free to let us know your experiences on the caucuses — did you go or will you wait until the votes mean more at the end of June? Who won your precinct? Are you going to go to County? I was very happy to hear that Romanoff beat Hick statewide by about 55-30%, but really, unless Hick fails to make 30% at the state convention, he’ll be on the ballot and I think the results will be more like our caucus than how the whole state did in helping Andrew Romanoff come in first. I just remember how far behind Bennet was for Senate in his first race after being the appointed Senator, and how he just reversed the field for the primary because of name recognition alone (imo). It certainly wasn’t because of his ideas or inspirational messaging.
The floor is yours...