Our local caucus

We're back from the caucus this evening, and it was an interesting event. It was held in the gym of a local elementary school, and each candidate's representatives staked out an area where his or her supporters gathered. However, as you can see in the photo, the areas quickly overflowed into each other, and it was a grand and glorious confusion. (You can see Judy toward the right side of the picture with a slight highlight.) We were told that no Democratic caucus in Iowa had ever had over some 550 attendees, and our little precinct had 762. This looks like a big year for the Democratic party turnout.

With that number of attendees, each candidate had to have 115 supporters to be viable in the caucus. We caucused for Richardson, who had the largest number of supporters outside the big three, but he only had 57 in the first round. His precinct chair worked really hard to gather people from Biden and Dodd, the only others who had supporters, but in the end only the top three got enough support in the second round even though some still stuck with Richardson. We supported Richardson for the first round and would have liked to see the other minor candidates' supporters join us, but they didn't, so we eventually switched to Obama for the second round. We were disappointed that such a good candidate got so little attention and support, but hope for a Democratic victory in November and hope that the Governor can find a worthwhile way to bring his considerable skills into the government.

So -- in the second round of votes, the final tallies were Obama 341, Clinton 208, and Edwards 153. This translates into 5 delegates for Obama, 3 for Clinton, and 2 for Edwards. We've not turned on the TV yet to see how things turned out statewide, but our precinct looks like Obama may just come away from Iowa with an awfully lot of momentum!