Hands-On Politics: My First Caucus

I attended my precinct (New Brighton-1) MN-DFL caucus on February 5th, 2008 so I could learn more about the political process. This account is an assignment for my Online Media course at Anoka-Ramsey Community College under the instruction of Richard Broderick.

At a little after 6 pm on February 5th my car pulled into the Mounds View High School parking lot. It was already near capacity, and the lobby of the high school was bustling with people trying to find their precinct meeting location. New Brighton (my city) had all four of our precincts meeting in the school's auditorium.

There was a short line outside of the auditorium at this point, so I was able to sign in quickly. A little later, the auditorium began to sound like an auction, but with a dozen announcers. Our precinct began to cast presidential preference ballots so those who did not want to deal with other party business could go home.

When my precinct began to move through the agenda, we did not have a chair at the caucus that night, so we elected a temporary one first. We also elected a chair to serve a two-year term, as well as two associate chairs to back him up. We went over the process of caucusing, presidential preference ballots, and we began to talk about delegates. Our precinct was allowed to send 56 delegates to the next level, so we decided to send around a sign up sheet with an alternate ‘option’ to cut people out if more than 56 people signed up.

While we were signing up, Rep. Kate Knuth talked to us about the historic turn out. Also, Senator Satveer Chaudhary spoke, thanking those who turned out for the caucus that evening for their participation.

One of those resolutions I would like to see advance is one that I wrote. Being aware of the rising cost of tuition for students within the public higher education system in Minnesota, I was able to have my precinct encourage the our state to better fund public higher education. My resolution is vague, but I hope it will be integrated with and strengthened by other public higher education resolutions from around the state.

This entry will close with some numbers I collected:

• My precinct passed 23 resolutions.
• My precinct was able to fill all 59 delegate spots to the Senate District 50 DFL Meeting on the 8th of March.
• Our precinct chose Obama over Clinton nearly 2:1 in presidential preference ballots.
• The last time my precinct caucused, there were 69 people.
• We projected around 100 to 120 people from my precinct to attend this caucus.
• There were 327 people signed up in my precinct at the 2008 caucus.

This contribution is a shortend version of my full account, which can be found here.