In Washington State the Republican party selects delegates to its county conventions at precinct caucuses. Delegates at the county convention in turn select delegates to the state convention. At the state convention the delegates will select the delegates who will attend the national convention.

Earlier this year I attended my first organized political function, the Bernie Sanders rally held on the campus of the University of Washington before the primary season had begun. Of course this county convention was much smaller but it was interesting to make some comparisons.

White, Middle Class, Older Voters — the GOP Core

The attendees look like me. White and middle-class. In fact, I was one of the youngest people there; excluding some kids who were obviously “in tow” and a few 20-somethings doing their best Alex P. Keaton impressions, almost everyone I saw was 50+.

At the Sanders rally the crowd was much more diverse demographically.

According to the US Census, in 2014 Snohomish county is estimated to be 80% white and 3% black. I was born and raised here and that matches closely to my personal experiences. In the past 20 years there’s been in inflow of Asian, Indian and eastern european residents due to the tech jobs in the area which with the addition of a small number of latinos accounts for the other 17%. So the lack of diversity in the racial makeup of the county convention isn’t that surprising. The opportunity clearly exists for the Republicans to make efforts at onboarding some of those non-white tech workers though.

Republican Party State Chair Susan Hutchison addresses the convention

One thing that really stood out to me was how many women were at the event, and not just as delegates. The chair of the state Republican party is a woman. The chair of the county party is a woman. I would estimate that there was roughly as many women as men in the delegate assembly. While the Republican party may have a branding issue related to its support for women, the actual organization of the party itself seemed filled with empowered female participants.

That doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been tracking trends in increasing participation by females in high profile occupations and organizations since reading Susan Faludi’s book Stiffed nearly 20 years ago. You can draw a pretty straight line from the disproportionate success of females in high school through success in college to success in post-grad studies in law & medicine right into the ranks of economic and political power. The era of women running our civic organizations is here.

Agenda of the Convention

Of course the marquee function of the county convention is selecting delegates to the state convention. But the county party had other business as well and that was also pretty interesting.

I Pledge Allegiance

After calling the convention to order an invocation was delivered. This was a a fairly anodyne call for “our Father” to bless the convention, the elected officials of the party and the United States. Everyone bowed their heads and gave silent thanks.

Then the assembly turned to the flag and gave the Pledge of Allegiance. As I was reciting the words it struck me that I probably had not done that since I was in college — more than 20 years ago. It felt so patriotic and good to be there doing that with my community in a way that wasn’t cynical or ironic.

Recognition of Elected Officials

The convention chair then asked that any elected officials in the room rise and be recognized. I really liked that too — the point of a political party is to win elections, and the people who ran for those offices had done the thing for which the assembly had gathered to support. It was nice to take a moment to recognize those elected officials who were in attendance from school boards to the state legislature.

After a short bit of organizational activity the convention made time for people who were seeking office to speak. Each was given 2 minutes.

About a half-dozen people spoke. Several delivered a grab bag of positions likely to find some traction: they were for guns, against abortion, for securing the borders, against taxes. Obviously given the audience these comments got generally favorable responses.

There has been a recent shakeup in several state level races on the Democratic side of the aisle and resulting reactions from the Republicans and Ed Barton walked the convention through these chess moves which ended with him announcing that instead of seeking a seat in the state Senate, he was instead going to seek a seat in the state House (this is meaningful because the Republicans currently control the Senate, and are 3 or 4 seats away from gaining control of the House). It was like watching a realtime West Wing episode!

Janice Huxford addresses the convention

The standouts in this part of the program were both women, Janice Huxford who is running for a state legislative seat on a platform of taking on regulatory overhead, and Elizabeth Scott who is a current state legislator and who is running for Congress. Scott was particularly impressive, speaking about her time in Olympia and noting that she’s voted against the Republican party’s wishes over 300 times because she would not vote to increase spending or to accept federal transfers for increased spending. It was notable that in a year where the “elites” are getting hammered that Scott got a standing ovation for her stand on spending in opposition to her own party at that party’s county convention. Oh yes, the times, they are a changin’.

Presidential Campaigning

The chair then permitted representatives of the 3 Presidential campaigns in attendance to address the assembly. Throughout the day this was the only portion of the event that got even a little bit less than polite, and I have to stress, only a little bit.

The Trump and Cruz campaigns had set up tables at the back of the room where they were engaging in some retail politics prior to the convention being gaveled to order.

Donald Trump supporters at the convention take a photo before working the crowd

The Cruz team seemed much more organized than the Trump team. The Kasich team was nowhere to be seen.

Ted Cruz HQ at the convention was a hive of activity

When the representative for the Trump campaign rose to speak someone in the back of the hall shouted “He’s a liberal!”, and there were some scattered boos. The brief speech started with a call to “Make America Great Again” which got a pretty good response — say what you want about the man & his politics, Trump’s got a catchphrase that resonates with the party rank & file. After the Trump rep finished speaking the convention chair reminded the attendees that while partisanship was fine, it was important to be respectful of the speaker’s time and message, and that was the last (albeit minor) disruption.

The Cruz team had distributed Cruz signage to delegates throughout the hall. There were some Trump signs but they were mostly held by spectators.

The Cruz representative got a pretty big cheer from the delegates and much waving of the aforementioned signage which was another clue as to how much impact Cruz was going to have at the convention.

The Kasich campaign pitch was honest if bland: Kasich scores better against Clinton & Sanders in head to head matchups than either Trump or Cruz and Kasich will be a more “electable” candidate. Hardly anyone paid attention or responded to the speaker. A reasonable approximation of the entire Kasich campaign in 2016.

As I watched these proceedings it struck me: some of the people in that room would likely be on the floor in Cleveland at the national convention, a convention I expect to be open and contested, and they might have to make decisions about whom to vote for if their first choice cannot make a majority. There were people in that room who are likely to be making history later this year.

The District Caucuses

After the speeches the convention was separated into individual caucuses by legislative district. Legislative districts are how the state legislature is apportioned and they don’t map to county or congressional district boundaries. I live in the 1st legislative district so I went to observe its caucus.

The 1st Legislative District caucus convenes to select state convention delegates

At the caucus the legislative district would select delegates to the sate convention. The district was allocated 23 delegates. To be eligible, a delegate to the county convention (selected in precinct caucuses in March) had to file paperwork with the county party a few days before the convention. Alternately, anyone could be nominated from the floor by a delegate. I had been prepared to ask to be nominated if it appeared that there would be any lack of willing participants. There were 35 or so candidate delegates so I did not pursue that opportunity — I felt it would be unreasonable to ask to be included since I hadn’t done any of the participatory work the accredited delegates had and they had no lack of willing attendees for the state convention.

Each candidate delegate was allowed 30 seconds to speak to the caucus. Each candidate was assigned a number. Worksheets were handed out to the delegates so that they could track by number the remarks and affiliations of the candidate delegates. Each delegate was asked to state why they wanted to be a delegate, and which Presidential candidate, if any, they favored.

This was where I saw the true level of organization of the Cruz campaign manifest itself. Of the 30+ speakers, at least 90% were Cruz supporters. Just based on sheer numbers, most of the 1st Legislative District delegates to the state convention were going to be for Cruz regardless of the voting.