IDAHO SPRINGS — As a plastic bin of cookies and cups of beer made their way around the crowded hallway of an office building, 72-year-old Bob Poirot watched as Carolyn Boller tried her best to explain how a Democratic caucus works.
Many of the 20 or so attendees sitting in broken-down rocking chairs and on stools on this single-digit-temperature evening were first-timer politicos. Dressed in flannels and jeans, they weren’t quite getting it.
Clear Creek County Democratic Party chair Becky Cook handed out practice worksheets, as attendees were spontaneously breaking out into private conversations about Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.
Poirot, an old-timer both in years and in local political involvement, took it in with quiet amusement.
“We’ve been struggling for years to get anybody interested in politics,” he said.
“I’m really appreciative of the fact that we have all these new people in here. . . . They’re more enthusiastic than the people who’ve been around for 50 years,” he said with a chuckle.
One week from tonight, registered Democrats and Republicans in Colorado can go to neighborhood gathering places and caucus, and longtime party stalwarts say they have never seen such fervor.
Enthusiastic political novices have been donning candidate buttons and packing conference centers, libraries, homes and churches to learn how Feb. 5 is going to work.
That a caucus system is complex — how many delegates get to go to county, state and the national conventions depends on the party — hasn’t seemed to turn off people.
A Denver Post poll found that 48 percent of Democrats and 35 percent of Republicans were planning to caucus. Among those Democrats, 59 percent said it would be their first time. And among Republicans, 64 percent said this year would be their first.
It heartens 60-year-old Barbara Martin of Colorado Springs. Eight years ago, she attended her caucus and five people were there. “I was shocked,” she said. “This is a precinct with 1,200 people in it.”
But this year is different. Several early states have recorded record turnouts in primaries and caucuses.
In Colorado, party officials say soaring numbers of people are volunteering at phone banks and knocking on doors encouraging people to caucus and explaining what it is.
Two weeks ago, Douglas County Democratic chair Paul Thompson booked a caucus training in a room that could hold 40 people. More than 100 people crammed in. In Jefferson County, a Republican caucus training planned for 60 people brought in 150.
That excitement is contagious. At a recent Mitt Romney caucus training in Black Forest, a room full of people were learning how to take part and how to recruit new participants when Colorado Springs mortgage broker Steve Haney raised his hand and announced: “I just got my financial planner and my physician!”
A grassroots process
Caucuses are among the most grassroots of politics. They are local, run in real time, and are driven by the Democratic and Republican parties.
For the most part, they are not secret. Neighbors pile into a room and see who the others vote for. Results are tallied and reported to the state parties by volunteers who offer up their time to count hands.
Because the vote is at 7 p.m. sharp and there are no absentee ballots, turnout is usually lower than in primaries, which are run like general elections.
In Colorado, unaffiliated voters are not allowed to vote on Super Tuesday, but both Republican and Democratic party officials say they welcome independents to talk and hear about candidates. A voter must have registered with one of the parties by Dec. 5 to participate.
So far, neither party has produced a clear national front-runner, making Colorado and the other Feb. 5 states more important. This is the first time the state has had a role on Super Tuesday — when more than 20 states either caucus or hold primaries.
In recent years, Colorado’s caucuses have been held in the third week of March — usually when the nominees are already decided.
“We’ve never made a difference in selecting the president, but this year we’re on super-duper Tuesday,” said Thompson.
Some caucuses confused
In intimate conversations across the state, voters say the 2008 election is important, given a pending economic crisis, the ongoing Iraq war and pressing domestic issues such as Social Security.
“Our nation could go in several directions, and I don’t like what I’m hearing from the Democrats,” said Jeff Nelson, an Army major on active duty at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. Nelson supports Romney. “I want an outsider to go in and fix this. . . . There is an extreme importance of getting the right person.”
However grassroots — even quaint — the idea of caucuses is, in other states they were met with some confusion and disorganization.
In Nevada, one precinct ran out of ballots and people were allowed to mill in and out of the room after the noon cutoff. Complaints surfaced in a couple of precincts about the people running the operation wearing candidate T-shirts and unfairly counting hands.
In an elementary-school cafeteria in Iowa, a shouting match broke out between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supporters.
In Colorado, both parties have asked that the presidential preference poll — among Democrats it is usually a show of hands, among Republicans it can be a secret ballot — be taken first when the caucus starts at 7 p.m.
Because Democrats require candidates to get at least 15 percent of the vote, there can be two polls taken. The second vote, when one candidate is eliminated, is usually rowdy.
“It’s like having simultaneous auctions taking place or multiple rock bands in the same room,” said Ken Bickers, political-science professor at the University of Colorado. This scene is off-putting for some.
“You have to be able to stand up in front of your friends and neighbors and talk about your choice,” he said. “It’s not for the faint of heart or for the undecided.”
After the presidential preference poll, the precinct captains, some 3,200 of them, will report results either by e-mail or cellphone to the counties and then to the state party.
“We hope to have everything done by 9:30,” said Matt Sugar, spokesman for the state Democrats. “But we already know that someone’s cellphone is not going to work.”
Taking active roles
Patricia Fleming, a 73-year old Democrat, and 26-year-old Eva Worthington, a Republican, will be there.
Fleming, a Clinton supporter who lives in Clear Creek County, said she has decided to become more active because she’s tired of “hearing so many negative things about America and about democracy.”
“I feel that if I’m not going to take an active role, I shouldn’t complain,” she said.
Worthington said she was caucusing for the first time this year, mostly because of her 2-year-old son.
“I think becoming a parent changed a lot of this for me,” said Worthington, who lives in Colorado Springs. “I think about the future all the time for my son. I want to make the best decisions so it will be good for him.”
State Republican Party chair Dick Wadhams said he’s never seen a race this exciting — except perhaps the 1976 battle between President Ford and former California Gov. Ronald Reagan.
“No candidate has caught on,” said Wadhams, who is neutral. “We’ll look back at this and say what an exciting election year it was. Both parties have offered up a vat of drama.”
Allison Sherry: 303-954-1377 or asherry@denverpost.com
Father of 3 gets involved, aims to be delegate
For Don Dimig, the battle to become a delegate at the national convention started with an inspiring speech.
Though the Boulder County Republican has always voted, he spent his 20s and 30s working hard in his job as a developer and general contractor. He had never paid attention to what it takes to ink a candidate name on a ballot in November — or what it takes to get to the national convention.
But this year, after a speech in Denver, he feels a particular stirring for Mitt Romney and has decided to give back to his party.
Dimig has taken personal time to go to Iowa and join a phone bank. He frequently talks to Romney’s son, Josh Romney, and has been working the state Republican circuit up and down the Front Range.
He will, at the state convention in May, try to convince people he is among the best in the state to represent the Republicans in Minneapolis.
“It’s an American right we have, and a lot of people don’t take advantage of it,” said Dimig, a 43-year-old father of three.
Because Colorado’s Republican Party doesn’t require the 43 delegates going to the national convention to pledge to one particular candidate, those people’s votes at the national convention could be up for grabs, said state Republican Party chair Dick Wadhams.
If there is still more than one Republican vying for a spot on the November ballot — currently there are five — the 43 delegates (three more are “automatic” delegates like Sen. Wayne Allard) could be courted personally by individual candidates. Should that happen, “all eyes would be on Colorado,” Wadhams said.
On the Democratic side, delegates will be pledged to a candidate when they go to the national convention in Denver. The only exceptions are the so-called super delegates, who include the governor, Sen. Ken Salazar and some party leaders.
The party makes sure that, from the precinct level all the way up to the Democratic National Convention, the delegates elected are proportionally representing how their respective group voted.
For example, if a Democratic precinct has 100 people and 80 went for one candidate and 20 went for another, and the precinct sent 10 people to the county convention, eight of those 10 would have to represent one candidate and two would have to represent the other.
The process is opaque enough that Democratic precinct captains are encouraged to bring calculators to the caucuses a week from tonight.
Dimig will start campaigning for the national convention at his Republican precinct in Boulder County next Tuesday.
“I have a desire to get involved sooner (than November,)” Dimig said. “I’m more aware that the person in the Oval Office is going to make a bigger difference this time. . . . It was time I got myself in the system.”
