I like this a lot more than having to debate the dissemblers of the status quo on teevee: hanging out and meeting the amazing volunteers who make up the political revolution. I had that great privilege yesterday morning in Ely, Nevada. A short report from the ground before I depart this morning to my next stop in Nevada.
Ely is in White Pine County—find Las Vegas on the map (where I drove from) and take your eye basically north up the map and you’ll find Ely about 240 miles (as an aside, putting on a lot of road miles in Nevada is not a big burden: beautiful land to see). Ely is the county seat and has probably about 4,000 people in total—but the County has a whole might have maybe 10,000. There are basically two major employers in the area: mining and a state maximum security prison.
That said, there are a pile of delegates at stake here—93—who are elected at the Saturday caucus, who, then, go to the county convention where delegates are, then, elected to the state convention in May where the delegates to the national convention are selected. Simple, huh?
In the picture above, from left, are Chris, who is just 18-years old; yours truly; Franklin, who is from Moab, Utah; Anne, who has lived in Ely for about two years and is originally from the East Coast; and, finally, Ty, a Mormon who is from Torrey, Utah and runs a B & B there.
We gathered at the main hotel here, the La Quinta Inns and Suites. After Paul Himmelstein, the awesome Sanders campaign field organizer (taking the pic) and I had given them a little info and pep talk, these hardy four were just about to leave to knock on doors in a blowing snow storm, with winds gusting up to 50 MPH. It actually abated around lunch time and the sun even peeked out but they were out there during the fury of the storm. I would run into Ty later at about 5:30 (see below) and she had just finished up canvassing...that’s about 7 hours knocking on doors.
Chris heard about Bernie through Reddit. “The more I heard about him, the more I liked him especially that he doesn’t take corporate money”, to which everyone else nodded in agreement. Chris is a precinct captain...at 18 years old! They all talked about the various aspects of Bernie’s program that they support but the unifying idea was pretty simple: enough of the status quo, we need that political revolution.
Last night, those four joined a whole slew of other precinct captains (dumb me, I got a bit too caught up in talking to people and neglected to snap a pic) to go through a Bernie 101 I do and, then, a mock caucus that Paul and I jointly did. It’s a hoot to watch people practice the whole process, and a good exercise since many people might be caucusing for the first time and it’s not a bad thing to feel what the process is like before you walk into the real thing. Perhaps the fun highlight of the night: one women in the back (didn’t get her name) who said she’s a convert...she was a lifelong Republican, a moderate one she said, who will switch her registration on Saturday to become a Democrat and vote for Bernie (the caucus has same day registration, during which you can switch your party).
I’m telling you: these folks are the heroes on the ground who are putting hours of time in to make sure Bernie captures as many as delegates as possible. While the rest of the world thinks “Las Vegas” when they hear Nevada (or maybe some think “Reno”), an important segment of what will happen takes places in the rural areas. So, a huge thank you to Chris, Franklin, Anne, Ty and the rest of them!