Not So Raucous Caucus

By Erik Hare

Punxsutawny Phil saw his shadow yesterday, meaning there are at least six weeks left in Winter.  But that entire legend has to apply only in western Pennsylvania, because here in Minnesota another six weeks of winter is a dead-on guarantee.  We might as well drag out my own pudgy pet mammal, Cocoa the Cat, and predict the weather based on her being scared of her own shadow – another sure thing.

We have a different tradition in Minnesota.  We don’t wait for the furry ones to poke their noses out, but we all venture out one night in February to see what’s going on for ourselves.  It’s called Caucus Night, which has been folded into the largest political event in the nation.  Some people call it “Super Tuesday”, the WWF might call it the “Candidate Smackdown”, but for us it’s still just Caucus Night.

This night isn’t just about politics, even though there’s enough of that going around for anyone this year.  We all come out of our houses and sit in uncomfortably small chairs in a school and see our neighbors for the first time in months.  We don’t have a pleasant talk about the weather, but get into the meat of what’s on our mind – after we’ve caught up with people we haven’t seen for a while.

Sadly, we don’t all come together in one place. The DFL Party (a merger of the Democrats and the Farmer-Labor Party some 60 years ago) holds caucuses in every precinct in Saint Paul, but the Republicans at only one site per State Senate district and the Independence Party even fewer.  The Green Party has their own night later in the month, but the principle is the same.  I’ll be traipsing off to Monroe School like everyone else in my end of town, Ward 2 Precinct 7. 

This is a heavily DFL town, so most of our neighbors wind up together at the DFL caucus.  It would be nice to have an event that really brought people out of all political stripes into one place, just so we can see them again and make sure they’re OK.  But it’s politics that brings us out, and politics that divides us. We have to make the best of what we have, and so we do.  After all, I met my first wife at the DFL caucus, so it really comes down to what you make of the event.

After we’ve had a chance to catch up with each other, there’s a good round of party business and then we get our chance to sound off.  Some of my neighbors are a bit predictable in who they will support or what resolutions they will offer, and others aren’t.  Everyone feels that this is a place where you can speak your mind no matter what, and no one will stop you or say anything too rude in response.  In short, we take a moment out of our winter’s slumber to learn what’s really on the minds of the community.

Then, it’s time for the walking sub-caucuses.  If we have more people there than delegates allotted, as we often do, people have some time to declare sub-caucus names like “Clinton-Progressive Values” or “Uncommitted-Labor” until we run out of ideas as to how to divide ourselves.  Each name that was called out and duly written down is then assigned a spot in the room to gather, and everyone gets up to form a clot of people with like values.  Some of these sub-caucuses do not prove “viable”, meaning that they don’t have enough people to elect one delegate (or less than the total attendance divided by the delegates we elect), and merge into others.  And at the end, each sub-caucus learns how many delegates they get to pick and submits names to the person holding the master list.  It’s a fun little pantomime that gets the blood moving for a bit.

Even though it’s the politics that brings us all there, it’s really the catching-up that makes it all worth the while.  We know what the weather will bring us, and we all have opinions about what politics can bring us.  But what really counts as news is what comes in the small moments as we’re waiting to begin or waiting for the walking sub-caucuses to settle down. 

I don’t know how the sleepy, overweight fur children feel about being woken up in the middle of winter, but it’s a lot of fun for humans.  Of course, we have to bundle up a bit,  but we know winter is in for the long haul no matter what.  That’s why we have Caucus Night to make our own fun!