Report from Precinct 152 (Central Austin)
Just returned from celebrating our successes achieved through spending all day at the Travis County Expo Center to vote for Obama delegates.
I know Kath25 made her report, but my comment on her thread was going to be quite long for a comment, so I thought I'd post this as my first diary instead....so go easy on me, OK?
More below...
We headed out about 8:15am this morning for an easy 15-minute drive, except that the line of cars on the road prior to turning onto the street of the Expo Center was at least a mile long - both lanes, and then I heard it was another 1-2 miles on that street after the turn. Some judicious cutting through neighborhood streets and parking in a neighborhood across the road from the Expo Center got us there in only 45 minutes, including a short hike.
Checking in took quite some time. They extended the check-in indefinitely, due to how long it was going to take to get the long, long lines of cars down the road and into the Expo Center parking lot, and then to get the people checked in and into the building.
We arrived fairly early, so spent perhaps the next hour calling all the Obama folks from our precinct who weren't there yet to give them short-cut instructions for getting to the center. I introduced myself to everyone who showed up in our huge section, so I could 'take roll.' This, even though I'm an introvert. What we will do for democracy!
At least 20 local, state and national politicians gave speeches all morning long, all urging us to come together after the nominee is selected to make sure we put a Democrat in the WH. I would guess from the sound of the roars of the crowd at various Obama-centric statements that Obama supporters there outnumbered the Clinton supporters maybe 60-40% (just guessing).
Our beloved Congressman, Lloyd Doggett spoke, as well as State Senator (and our former mayer) Kirk Watson (of Chris Matthews Hall of Shame); Terry McAuliffe; Ron Kirk, Dallas' former mayor, now running for US Senate against the evil John Cornyn, and others. Mark Strama (who beat Jack Stick for TX House Rep. in '04) spoke and told us he had suggested to Obama that he should be considered for the VP choice - for an Obama/Strama ticket. He said Obama was considering our current mayor, so he could have an Obama/Will Wynn ticket. :)
Meanwhile, I think the credentials committees were verifying all the credentials of those who showed up and signed in. A very few were disqualified, but from what I heard, it sounded like the 1 or 2 disqualified folks from each campaign canceled each other out.
It was a very long afternoon, people were bored but cheerful, several rounds of the wave went through the crowd, some folks were dancing down on the floor, though there was no music (go figure - in the Live Music Capital of the World?). Around 2 or 2:30 pm, some speaker said something of substance, though I've forgotten what -- and the reaction was, hey, something finally happened!
Finally, sometime between 4-5pm, we got to vote for our delegates to go to State. There were supposed to be 23 Clinton supporters and 65 Obama supporters from our precinct. I think that 2-3 Clinton supporters failed to show, and one extra Obama alternate did come. So we had 66 and they had (I think) 20.
We were so organized, I was truly impressed. We had met previously with other Obama delegates for training downtown (and Obama called us that night! Woo-hoo!!). With such a large delegation, we met again in our precinct to organize our voting strategy. We had broken into 5 color-coded groups and determined exactly who would vote for whom. But then, the Clinton group's voting strategy was not what we expected from them, so we had to re-strategize on the fly. Our organizers were very sharp and able to respond very nimbly, to our best advantage.
Bottom line: because we got all of our people to show up, and because we were pretty well prepared for how to best vote, we were able to maximize our delegates to go to the State Convention in June - we'll be sending 6 delegates and 6 alternates for Obama to Clinton's 1 delegate and 1 alternate! The initial results for our precinct's post-primary caucus had given them 2 delegates to our 5. So this is how you do it! Show up and hang out with your neighbors for a day. If your folks show up and theirs don't, guess who gets more votes?
Oh, and I get to go as an alternate to the State convention, too. :D
One of the coolest things, besides increasing our delegate count (not sure how this translates to the bigger state picture) was getting to meet about 50 neighbors I had never met before, spending all day working together to maximize our efforts. And we will continue to work together in preparation for the State Convention. But perhaps equally as important, we will also continue to organize at the local level to effect other kinds of change we all want to see.
Finally, some of us spent another 3 hours after the delegate voting process talking about Obama and politics and life over some mighty fine margaritas and pizza!
That wouldn't happen if all we did was go vote on some machine on primary day.
UPDATED: with video. That's Thad from our precinct explaining the issues towards the beginning of this video, and our precinct again at the end counting our first 65 of 66 Obama delegates.
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