Ah, Well.....

I guess I can give my version of events, pertaining to the previous post.

Well, you might have read about my local county party's nominating convention which I attended as a delegate, selected to represent my precinct in choosing our local state house reps., county councilmen, and county-wide officers. It made for an interesting day.

Registration started at 8 am, so a friend, also a delegate, came and picked me up at about a quarter to; so we got going. We ended up going down the wrong street. So my friend decided to have the oil in his car toped off since there was extra time, so we went to jiffy lube. The guys at juffy lube told us that the fan was loose;it was missing two bolts. They told us to go to Checker auto parts to get some bolts. We just went to a Les Schwab tire store, and they fixed up the problem for free. We also found out at the same Les Schwab that we were on the right street, but we just didn't go far enough east. So, we were on our way to the convention.

Once we rolled into the parking lot, it was crowded, like a popular sports event. Signs were everywhere, indocterinated youth handing out fliers and wearing campaign tee-shirts. I'll tell you right now, after leaving the parking lot, I could not get anywhere without having to wait in a line, being told by old people to hold my horses, and that "we are all going to the same place", when in fact we are not.

When we got onto the convention floor, it was a sea of booths. Yep, not a convention without a booth. The booth section is where the biggest crowds were, jockeying for free swag from their favorite candidate. I got a tee-shirt, a hat, a number of pins(a given), a free book(actually a good read) and a bag(could be construed as a man-purse).

At 9am, the convention came to order. We had a number of reports before we got to the buisness of choosing our candidates. To make a long story short, the chairman had to start telling jokes to take up some time while waiting for a guy who was supposed to make a report.

Next was caucas breakouts, which is where the different state legislative and Senate district candidates are chosen. My legislative district was Legislative district 42. If you read the article in the previous post, you would remember that blurb about Jim Bird pushing incumbent Peggy Wallace into a primary election. This was amazing because Jim Bird had no booth at the convention, had almost no campaign treasury(money out of his own pocket), and no sponsers, whereas Wallace had the support of other current state legislators(duh, they watch eachother's backs, don't they), sponsers, indocterinated youth, ect. Jim Bird pushed the primary vote with a straight 50%-50% vote(28-28). So I was pleased with that(If I didn't say it before, or you hadn't figured it out, I support Bird).

Now we've got a free hour to peruse the booths to meet some candidates, take free stuff, and eat before we had to go and vote for our local county council district candidate. So we got back in time for that vote, but decided to go get drinks durring the speeches because we both made up our minds about that race. We got back to the county council district vote at the tail end of voting, but had no trouble making it to place our ballots.

Next was county-wide elections, which meant the whole convention got back together for that vote. As I was listening to the speaches, I thought, "this won't change my opinion at all"; that was untill the challenger to the county sheriff position gave his speech. He was talking, I mean yelling, like he was a WWE anouncer; not to mention all he had to say was crap about his incumbent oponent. I was a little put off by that one. I still voted for him(the incumbent has been in office for 16 years and seems to be waisting money).

After that, we were tying up some loose ends, passed a couple of resolutions, when out of the blue, some buy stands up, wants to be recognized, eventualy is, and makes a "movement"(you don't make a "movement" in Roberts Rules of Order, you make motions) to have some state candidates(means running for U.S. congress or senate) who were present. This was a cheap attemp to gain unwarented favoritism for the candidates to be nominated for the party at the state nominating convention, where state candidates are to be elected. My opinion, which I know most of the convention held, is that speeches by state candidates belong at the state convention. If you read the article in my previous post, you would know all about this.

The Chairman finaly dug us out of that mess, and we finally got to leave.