By ILANA STERN
Will Rogers once said, "I belong to no organized party. I'm a Democrat." Well, Mr. Rogers would have been right at home at the 3rd Congressional District assembly at the Doubletree in Colorado Springs.
I got to the Doubletree fifteen minutes before our congressional district assembly and convention was to begin at 6pm. No signs, no people directing traffic, nothing but one huge line snaking around the lobby. I asked three or four people what they were standing in line for, and none of them actually knew - they just saw a line and figured they'd better stand in it!
But as I wandered around trying to figure out what was going on, one of our other La Plata County delegates found me and steered me directly to the correct (hidden, barely-marked) table where I could sign in for CD3. "But they're starting in five minutes!" I said nervously. "Don't worry, there's still another assembly in the room. Ours has been delayed by an hour."
(In fact, when I checked back an hour later, we'd been delayed another hour. Which wasn't so bad, because it gave me time to have some dinner.)
When CD3 finally got underway, we raced through the formalities and the introduction of all 92 delegate candidates for the national convention - yes, I said 92! Then it was time to vote.
Unfortunately, two of La Plata's candidates, our State Senator Jim Isgar and Michelle Rabouin, one of the few black women in La Plata County, were inexplicably omitted from the ballot. We were told write-ins were okay, then that they didn't count, then that they were okay, then that they didn't count. (I voted write-in for them anyway, to make a point.)
I finally stumbled out of the Doubletree at 10:20, exhausted, bewildered, and pissed off. (And full of sympathy for CD4, who were just starting their assembly. According to they guy handing out ballots, the last person in CD4 voted at 1:37 am!)
Fortunately, the state convention the next day went much more smoothly. La Plata County was at the very back of the floor. I felt smug, looking around at the smaller spaces near us allocated to other mountain counties – Montrose, Summit, Hinsdale (where the Democratic population has evidently bounced back since Alferd Packer "et five of them") – and then I saw the huge swaths of the World Arena allocated to counties like Boulder, Jefferson, and Larimer. Even the famously Republican El Paso County (where we were, in Colorado Springs) had more delegates than we did. (El Paso County has twice as many Democrats as La Plata has people.)
Clearly, if we were going to get any delegates at all, we were going to have to stick together. And in fact, Kim Doyle-Wille of Eagle County had started organizing the "Coalition of Mountain Counties" to vote as a bloc for Western Slope delegates.
Even within CD3 this was an issue, because by far the biggest county in our congressional district is Pueblo – yep, the Front Range dominates even our "mountain" district! Not everyone from our side of the state was on the list she handed out, but it helped us make sense of the ballot that turned out to be almost as big as the La Plata County phone book.
It was great listening to the speakers, not only the heavy guns like Mark Udall, but the candidates in other congressional districts, like Betsy Markey, who impressed us with her fire and drive. And during the Clinton and Obama presentations, by Terry McAuliffe and Janet Napolitano respectively, the cheering and sign-waving let everybody know that we support both our national candidates.
Well, at least we supported them at the state convention. The results aren't in yet, but I'm hoping that a few of our Western Slope delegates will make it to the national convention in August. Sure, I was a little annoyed that the populous counties on the Front Range overwhelmed our tiny counties; but driving back across Wolf Creek Pass, I realized that I'd just as soon give up a little political clout in exchange for living in the prettiest corner of Colorado.
Ilana Stern is a meteorologist, writer, backcountry junkie and Democrat who has lived in Durango since 2002 and Colorado since 1989. She is a delegate from La Plata County, and is pledging her support to Barack Obama.