Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Making The Caucuses Happen, Part 2

I really meant for Part Two to get posted sooner.

Here's some of what's happened since Part One.

Countless candidate and surrogate events that I've completely ignored, though today I accidentally ran into Bowzer from Sha Na Na phone banking at Iowa City Hillary HQ, while I was showing around a professor from Japan.

I'm now averaging about 20 emails or other types of electronic messages an hour during normal waking hours. Remembering who contacted me through what medium and what they wanted is a challenge.

Feedback is primarily negative, but the people doing this stuff know, or SHOULD know, that going in.



Rumor 1: John Deeth is secretly for Bernie and deliberately scheduled the east side of Iowa City caucuses in bad locations to suppress the vote.

Rumor 2: John Deeth is secretly for Hillary and deliberately scheduled the west side of Iowa City caucuses in bad locations to suppress the vote.

The intricacies of a 114 location caucus plan, 57 precincts times two parties, are lost on a person who's mad they can't go to the school across the street. I'm at the point where I'm extremely grateful when I get a thank you for an answer that disappoints someone.

The day job has been good enough to let me work half time this week, though even it work it's caucus, caucus, caucus: "No, the parties already printed the list, you need to re-register there... Republican or Democrat? No, they're at different locations... No, there aren't any absentees, you have to go..."

Media interviews, local and national, are so frequent that I forget about them till my name pops up on my Google News alert and I remember, Oh, yeah, I did that.


At 2:43, right after Steve King and The Donald.

The last two Saturdays have been training and handing out packets. Along with more TV.


This was January 16, just a few hours before a took a brief, but ultimately heartbreaking, football break. With my Packers out, I'm rooting for Peyton Manning to go out on top. Ep-ic come-back starts right here.

We've tested that reporting app twice - the first worked out the kinks, the second fairly smooth

I've had three last minute chair replacements - two moves and one death in the family. While I was asleep I had a chair drop out and a replacement step up before I even knew about it.


The Johnson County Republicans and Democrats split the bill and did a joint publication of our locations, and we had a sit down together to write a joint press release. After that was published and sent, we had to send it again because of a last minute site change in Shueyville. My diligent chairs found a misunderstanding about time and space (Steven Hawking is working on that) and got us moved across the street.

We also have one caucus site with two addresses: There's been some confusion about Bella Sala in Tiffin. The place was recently annexed into the city limits and that has changed the street address. Google Maps has not caught up. The OFFICIAL address is 205 S Park Rd Tiffin. The prior address was 3232 Jasper Ave NW, Iowa City. It's the same place but it IS in Tiffin. Dems and Republicans are caucusing side by side there, with of course Dems on the left and Republicans on the right.

I know I'm forgetting something but that's my mantra these days,  I know I'm forgetting something. Someone always reminds me.

1 comment:

Brian said...

Good luck next week! We are watching from afar.