It Was A Dark And Stormy Night...

Last Thursday I helped to elect a new House District Representative. The process took 10 days, a big chunk of my time, and voting during a snow storm at 11 at night.

Everything was set into motion when Anne McGihon, the former Representative, decided to leave before her term was over in order to rejoin her law firm and head to Washington D.C. Anne did an outstanding job for our district and our state, and she left very big shoes to fill.

As it turns out, there’s a very specific process that takes place when a representative leaves before their term is up. I figured it would simply be a standard election process. I was wrong. In order to fill the position before a vacancy was created, the district and state leadership enacted a little known, and rarely used contingency plan: Let the Precinct Committee People vote on it, otherwise known as: The Vacancy Committee.

I became a PCP in February ’07 at the same time I signed up to run for delegate for the DNC. They don’t really give you a manual or anything, you just sort of learn as you go. I was notified of my new responsibilities as a member of the Vacancy Committee via a sudden onslaught of e-mails from all sorts of people whom I had never heard of. They turned out to be candidates announcing their intention to run and why they were the best qualified for the job. Apparently, the contact info (e-mail and physical addresses as well as phone numbers) for all of the PCPs in the district had been given to the candidates. After the e-mails came the phone calls, mailings, and even a few people attempting to knock on my door. Oh, and the candidates knew they had 10 days to convince me to vote for them. I was suddenly extremely popular.

Invitations to coffee, and dinner at people’s homes came in droves. I chose to stick to the official events, as I wasn’t comfortable giving any one candidate special treatment. With my work and school schedule, it was pretty easy to artfully and respectfully dodge the unofficial requests. Daily phone calls and e-mails from people wanting to talk about their reasons for running, including their friends and associates wishing to vouch for them, became common place.

During the deluge, there developed an interesting e-mail driven conversation about whether or not a “place keeper” position would be preferable for the rest of the existing Representative’s term. This involved a fair amount of legal wrangling and questions of the political viability of who ever would hold the spot until a full blown election could be held in a year and a half. This idea was eventually, and thankfully, shot down.

Finally, it was time for election night. Denver was hit with a snow storm that bordered on becoming a blizzard, including white out conditions. There was some trepidation that the weather would keep enough people away and we wouldn’t be able to form a quorum. Fortunately, we had nearly 100 people show up. We needed at least 40 PCPs and ended up with 63.

I had to report to the basement of the University Park United Methodist Church at 6 p.m. It had been a while since I had been in a house of God, and thankfully, I continue to not burst into flames. Not even a mild smiting. Anyway, I had been nervous that we would be there all night. I based this on the history of House District 3 events, while having one of the largest voter turn outs in the state, not being very organized when it comes to process and procedure (see my blog posting: http://mikebtaylor.blogspot.com/2008/03/it-should-work-better-than-this.html). I was extremely pleased to discover that HD3 has finally got their act together. The entire evening ran like clock work, although we had a lot to get through. There were a ton of procedural points that needed to happen to make everything legal, then we had the final speeches of all nine candidates, a follow up question and answer period, three rounds of voting, and finally the announcement of who won.

Sadly, the person I was rooting for didn’t win, although they made it to the final two. The winner took the stage, made a victory speech, was congratulated by almost all the other candidates, and then began filling out the mountain of paper work. By the time I had to travel the snow covered two blocks home (it took me longer to brush the snow off my car than it did to drive home), it was nearly midnight.

In the end, I was quite pleased with how the evening went, and I was glad to have again been a part of the political process.