Taking a break from healthcare for a minute. Spent my Saturday morning at the 46th District Caucus. Have you thought about going and wondered what local party meetings are all about? Well I’ve been to several now and here’s how it works.
Mostly, they’re formally structured events focused on a particular bit of business, usually electing some subset of the group to be delegates to a county assembly or some such. Sometimes there is also a speaker, usually a candidate , who will make a speech, but usually not. Sometimes the two activities are combined, as in: “we’re going to hear our speaker and then we’re going to elect delegates to the county convention.” That covers the typical agenda. It usually takes place in the basement of a church, or in the gym of a school, and lasts about an hour.
The meetings follow Robert’s Rules of Order, which many people seem to be quite expert in, so there is much discussion of “motions” and “seconds” and “amendments” and so on. This aspect gets quite pedantic, but serves to keep the meeting on topic and to make sure things don’t get wildly out of hand.
Though open to all Republicans, the meetings are generally small and the attendee profile skews to Retirees, who probably have a bit more time to deal with local party administrative matters now that they’re not dealing with kids and work. There is also usually a little group of Activists. The Activists often have an eager glint in their eye and want you to sign something. Then there are usually one or two newcomers attending their first District level meeting, mostly there out of curiosity and looking a little confused. Finally, there are the party Veterans who actually manage the day to day rubber meets the road workings of the party. This local organizing function can be very important in getting out the vote and is handled by some very dedicated people. In the 46th District of Washington, this role is for true optimists since we haven’t had an elected Republican since 1983! But you can count me as one of the optimists, too.
The elections are generally not heavily contested. Basically, the Chairman has usually identified who should be on the committee (or whatever it is) and that person is usually approved. So the process is often somewhat formal and perfunctory, like many corporate annual meetings if you have ever been to one of those. The tension of these events, if there is any, is that a lot of Newcomers come hoping to find a debating society and others, the Activists, are looking to make political news by getting the District Caucus to formally adopt some sort of political motion endorsing their group’s views. So usually toward the end of the meeting the Activists make a motion to try to consider a resolution, which they have written up for the occasion. To understand the tone of these resolutions by the way, you have to imagine combining a somewhat fringy agenda, verbose and coded verbiage, and an air of determined pointlessness since nothing done at the District level actually matters except the election of representatives to the County level.
So the “excitement” is that the Veterans want to do the official business and get out of there without embarrassment and the Activists want to make resolutions. The Newcomers are often the people in the middle whose votes are necessary to save the District from the embarrassing proposal of the week.
At yesterday’s 46th district meeting in particular, the main business was to elect 20 delegates and 10 alternate delegates to the State Convention in Vancouver in June. In a written document distributed to everyone in attendance, Chairman Bob Guthrie endorsed 11 people who had been helpful to the party. Then nominations were taken from the floor such that we wound up with 25 candidates for 20 spots. The Chair’s candidates had a major advantage (they were all voted in) so the real issue was over the remaining nine spots. Each candidate who was present spoke for about 30 seconds, usually saying where they live or what they do or just saying their name and talking about their previous party involvement. No one really said anything ideological or very political. One woman basically just said that she was 100% Irish -- and she got elected! It’s funny how these things work, I guess.
While the party Veterans counted the votes, former State Senator George Scott said a few words recalling a bit of the 46th District’s history. That was actually quite interesting, and I have started to read his book about Washington state politics, A Majority of One: Legislative Life.
Ralph Kosche, who is the District’s representative to the party platform committee, also said a few words and encouraged people with platform recommendations to email him but unfortunately I can’t remember the email address. It was something like 46thgopplatform@gmail.com. But I’m not sure. If anyone remembers, please let me know!
When the votes were all counted, we had 20 delegates and 10 alternates. I was the #1 alternate. Yes, number 1!
At the very end, the Activists won a (very) modest victory, getting the group to adopt a resolution basically restating the 10th Amendment.
I do feel that perhaps things could be improved in two ways.
First, there should probably be some way to help people get informed about things that are going to happen in the meeting. So if there is going to be a resolution considered it should be available at a web site. If we’re going to elect representatives, maybe they should have to say something about themselves online. What the District representatives do at the state convention is vote on the platform mainly. So it would be helpful to know whether a given representative is a middle of the road Slade Gorton Republican or a Reaganite or a Glenn Beck Tea Partier. Coming out of yesterday’s meeting, there is no way at all to know what the representatives believe. So they may or may not really be representative of anything. That can be improved.
Second, maybe local party enthusiasts should have a debating society if that’s what some people want. There should be a website where people can voice their opinions and which is unofficially associated with the District.
Hey look. I just created one, a Google Group called Unofficial WA GOP 46th District Discussions. Maybe that will be helpful.
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