Western Slope and SLV Trainings
(Cross-Posted to DemNotes at www.DemNotes.com)
As I mentioned in my last post, we drove up to Glenwood Springs Friday night for trainings all day on Saturday. Thankfully, we arrived in Glenwood early enough to spend some time relaxing in the hot springs there.
We woke up and headed off to breakfast with Kim Phillips, who is the extraordinary DNC field director for Northwest Colorado. We had a discussion about some of the changing demographics and statistics for voters on the Western Slope. We talked about specific numeric targets for the counties and what work Kim is doing to help counties meet those targets.
Then, it was down the street to the RE-1 Administration building, where I spent an hour and a half going over the caucus process with about 30-40 folks, mostly from Garfield and Eagle counties. It was a really productive session, with a lot of extremely good questions from a wide variety of folks there. Kim then talked about the work that she is doing, and how the county party activists could help her. At least that’s what I think she did. I had to rush out after I was done to head down the road to Montrose. Bill Winter also came to both Glenwood Springs and Montrose to talk on behalf of the Obama presidential campaign, although his appearance was independent from, and not a part of my presentation or Kim’s presentation (I understand other Presidential campaigns were informed of the trainings, as well).
I then rushed down the road to Montrose. A wrong turn at Paonia did not help my already-rushed cause. We arrived in Montrose about ten minutes late, and I still had not had lunch. I rushed in and gave the same presentation as in Glenwood Springs, and again, there were a lot of wonderful questions and comments from the group assembled. In Montrose, there were even more counties represented among the crowded audience of about 35-40 folks: Montrose, Delta, Ouray, and San Miguel were among those in attendance.
Brandy was kind enough to run by Subway during the end of my presentation in Montrose, so I had something to eat finally as we headed back down the road toward Saguache. Of course, I wasn’t paying attention to what was planned in Saguache — about 3/4 of the way through my sandwich, I realized that we were going to be treated to dinner at the Oasis Restaurant as part of the evening — less than two hours away.
We actually arrived in Saguache a little before I thought I’d get there, surprising Esther Grant, who is the county chair. We sat down, and the food was on the way; of course, I was already full. I tried to eat as much of the wonderful chicken-fried steak as I could, but I was worried I’d burst if I ate much more, like a scene from Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life.”
After dinner, the group heard from HD62 candidate Rocky White, who is running against Ed Vigil and (possibly - it is unclear if he is running for re-election) incumbent Rafael Gallegos. White is a physician in Alamosa, and talked at length about his work on the health care issue, as well as other issues. After Rocky spoke, we headed over to the County Courthouse so I could give the caucus presentation. Again, it was a good session with a lot of questions.
Then, it was time to pack up and head back to Canon City.
All three of the caucus trainings went better than I had hoped. The “math” portion of the caucus evening can be very daunting, but it seemed that everybody understood it well, and got what I was trying to say.
By the way, for those of you who attended the training, I did have one part backward. I’ve based the caucus training on the agenda we used statewide in 2004. Yesterday, in a conversation with Billy Compton at the State Party and Carolyn Boller (Party Secretary), it appears we will be switching things around a bit in 2008 and holding the Presidential preference poll BEFORE we hold the assembly preference poll.
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There is one other bit of Party news this morning. I was on a conference call with other state chairs and vice chairs this morning, and our hotel assignments for the National Convention in Denver were distributed. While they are kind of public, I am going to wait to let you all know Colorado’s hotel until I do a separate post this afternoon, so the hotels themselves can receive notice of the delegation assignments directly from the DNCC. I’ll also remind you in that post that calling the hotel will do you no good — the rooms are all blocked by the DNCC and will be distributed to the state’s delegation next summer by the State Party.