Uncommited Dems Viable in Johnson County

This may be the only place in the state, but the Uncommitted preference group reached 15% viability at the Johnson County Democratic convention.

Numbers are pretty much all I have to report, since I missed all the speeches. I was in my usual convention role as credentials committee co-chair, which means I'm the dude doing the delegate data entry. That kept me in the Credentials Bunker from 8 AM till 11, and that seems to be when the speeches happened. I'd also decided that I was going to skip the platform this year, so once my services were no longer required I escaped and rode my bike.

But here's the numbers. On caucus night the Johnson County delegates split 202 for the president and 23 uncommitted. Uncommitted was able to fill all 23 of their seats and picked up five more from switches at check in. (Some of those were folks from places where uncommitted was non-viable on caucus night.) That was enough to put them over viability.

Team Uncommitted had more alternates present than seats available. They picked up another five delegates when Team Obama agreed to seat their extra five people. In turn, the uncommitteds agreed to seat five extra Obama people who hadn't been elected as delegates on caucus night, but were present and wanted to participate. Mostly that was people like elected officials. Those numbers weren't a quid pro quo, they just happened to match. So everybody who wanted a seat got a seat.

That's the Johnson County Democrats tradition: be inclusive whenever possible. Both teams were all happy friendly donkeys together. The biggest headache I had at credentials was someone whose name was spelled wrong in the caucus notes. Oh, THAT's why I couldn't find you. Compared to our usual issues, this was nuthin'.

Uncommitted then picked up four people from Obama at realignment, but lost one who switched from Uncommitted to Obama.

The final count was Obama 152, Uncommitted 36, which translated to 61 district/state delegates for Obama and 15 for uncommitted. Delegate elections were solved by our favorite method: put your hand down to be an alternate. But the platform committee seats were the real prizes, and we had to vote through multiple ballots on those.

I heard that Dave Loebsack stopped by but it was right at credentials crunch time. Absolutely no sign of Joe Seng people, if there even are any.