Matt Davidson
02-02-2008, 04:13 PM
Hello all,
I just returned from the caucuses in Sanford, ME and Eliot, ME. There's already a post about Sanford, but someone from the official campaign came there and gave a nice speech. We also had precinct captains in place there and the most signage of any candidate. Also multiple people were passing out literature both inside and outside, so we had this place covered.
One very frightening point was the McCain representative's speech. It was pure propaganda about how we're going to lose the war on terror if we don't elect mccain!!! I swear someone from the CFR must have written it and distributed it to the reps. The people weren't buying it from what I could tell. Some Romney staffers showed up from Boston, but they weren't really doing anything useful. They put up a yard sign and it blew away and almost crashed into some voters... and then they ran around cluelessly trying to tabulate votes before the ballots were cast. They had no delegate slates... I asked them that specifically.
At Eliot, I got there and we had no visible organization at all :(. I quickly signed up to give the speech for Ron Paul and put on some Ron Paul stickers and walked around to try to meet Ron Paul people. I found one at first (he's registered to be a delegate). Two more showed up (they're alternate delegates). One other guy also voted for us there (maybe or maybe not a delegate). In all we got 4 votes, mccain 20, romney 22, huckabee 1. Not incredibly encouraging... except for the fact that there more than the alloted 13 delegates signed up and we got spots after the caucus chair asked people to reconsider (Ron Paul supporters don't reconsider). There was no vote on delegates though, which was unexpected.
No other campaign showed up there, and no one else registered to give a speech for a candidate until I had given mine. Then a romney supporter gave 30 second speech, and then mccain 30 seconds, then some other romney attacking mcccain... then some other mccain attacking romney... it got kinda disorganized *like I thought a caucus should be* but only for a minute or two. Then they voted and some congressional candidates spoke and that was that. I monitored the vote count and it was all legit. I will check the results they report when it's all over (the vote counters were definitely mccain supporters).
Matt
What have you done for Ron Paul today?
I just returned from the caucuses in Sanford, ME and Eliot, ME. There's already a post about Sanford, but someone from the official campaign came there and gave a nice speech. We also had precinct captains in place there and the most signage of any candidate. Also multiple people were passing out literature both inside and outside, so we had this place covered.
One very frightening point was the McCain representative's speech. It was pure propaganda about how we're going to lose the war on terror if we don't elect mccain!!! I swear someone from the CFR must have written it and distributed it to the reps. The people weren't buying it from what I could tell. Some Romney staffers showed up from Boston, but they weren't really doing anything useful. They put up a yard sign and it blew away and almost crashed into some voters... and then they ran around cluelessly trying to tabulate votes before the ballots were cast. They had no delegate slates... I asked them that specifically.
At Eliot, I got there and we had no visible organization at all :(. I quickly signed up to give the speech for Ron Paul and put on some Ron Paul stickers and walked around to try to meet Ron Paul people. I found one at first (he's registered to be a delegate). Two more showed up (they're alternate delegates). One other guy also voted for us there (maybe or maybe not a delegate). In all we got 4 votes, mccain 20, romney 22, huckabee 1. Not incredibly encouraging... except for the fact that there more than the alloted 13 delegates signed up and we got spots after the caucus chair asked people to reconsider (Ron Paul supporters don't reconsider). There was no vote on delegates though, which was unexpected.
No other campaign showed up there, and no one else registered to give a speech for a candidate until I had given mine. Then a romney supporter gave 30 second speech, and then mccain 30 seconds, then some other romney attacking mcccain... then some other mccain attacking romney... it got kinda disorganized *like I thought a caucus should be* but only for a minute or two. Then they voted and some congressional candidates spoke and that was that. I monitored the vote count and it was all legit. I will check the results they report when it's all over (the vote counters were definitely mccain supporters).
Matt
What have you done for Ron Paul today?