Blue Mass Group

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Caucus OPEN THREAD

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Tell us where you are and what you’re seeing!

UPDATE (11:30 pm): WOW!!!  You guys are amazing.  To my knowledge, this thread is the single best collection of publicly available information on the caucuses right now.  There are dozens of cities and towns represented in the comments – and it sounds as though Deval Patrick had a very good day today (the front page of his website has a message reading “We did really well in all the places we expected to and even some unexpected places,” and touting their victory in Tom Reilly’s home town of Watertown).  Thanks, everybody!

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  1. I expect Brookline will allocate all 46 (?!) delegates for Deval Patrick.  Details around 4pm.

    • Well, maybe that headline goes a bit too far. Even though Brookline (with 47 delegates), was the largest caucus in the state, there was never really any doubt to whom it would throw its support. Nevertheless, all 46 delegates went for Deval and I imagine the Chair will also be a Deval supporter. Furthermore, all three alternates were from the Deval slate, and the vast majority of the town’s ex officio delegates have pledged to Deval- and we have quite a few ex officios. All in all, Deval will likely get almost 60 delegates out of Brookline at the convention. Not too shabby.

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      In alphabetical order: Bonifaz, Coakley and Goldberg were all in attendance.

      • Andrea Silbert was working it and got double digit delegates.  (See my other post re. a report from Arlington).

  3. West Roxbury (Boston’s Ward 20) was very busy this morning. Tom Reilly, Martha Coakley, Deb Goldberg, Tim Murray, and Sam Kelley (hope I didn’t miss anyone!) were all there. The place was hopping.

  4. Medford had some wards swept by Patrick, and others swept by Reilly. In my ward, all the elections were close, but all were won by Reilly delegates, including Reilly’s daughter and (as an alternate) her husband.

  5. Hello from Boylston –

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    We had 34 people show up! 34! Almost the whole Dem party in town! 🙂

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    We had 3 delegates and 2 alternates.

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    1 Delegate for Deval
    1 uncommitted leaning for Deval
    1 uncommitted

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    of the alternates:

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    1 Deval
    1 uncommitted leaning for Deval

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    A friend of mine went to the Woburn Caucus. I guess they hold all wards in the same room. He said it was confusing. He sat at his ward table of 6 people and was elected an alternate – then the guy who was going to be a delegate switched with him – so he is a Deval delegate just for showing up!

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    The guy who ran his ward was a Deval coordinator and he thought a lot of the other tables were ending up with Deval people….

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    Looks good.

  7. Town-wide caucus to elect 37 delegates and three alternates. About 340 people showed up with the Patrick slate collecting about three hundred of those. Each election was a 10-1 landslide for Patrick – so all of Arlingtons delegates are pledged to him.

      • Why do you figure that kerry was in Arlington?  I mean, I can see why candidates were in West Roxbury–it’s traditionally a big-turnout area and a stronghold of party politics.  And I can see why you’d have Rushing in the South End, for instance–he lives there and it’s his district.  But why would Kerry, who lives on Beacon Hill and isn’t running for anything this particular year–be in Arlington?

        • Arlington was a huge town for exporting volunteers for the Kerry campaign, a huge town for financial contributions to the Kerry campaign in 2004, and votes in huge numbers in Democratic primaries.

      • If you want to influence a caucus vote, you go where you can speak to people voting for the largest number of delegates – schedule permitting.  For a campaign, it’s most efficient to cover all the large town caucuses as the top priority.  In cities, you have to go to ward caucuses one by one.  In towns, you can get the whole town caucus all at once.

        • I don’t think so. I was one of the caucus organizers for  Deval and it wasn’t my impression (and this comes from having talked with 90% our delegates either today or over the past week (or most likely both). I didn’t even hear much buzz around any of the LT Governor candidates. She wasn’t at the one Democratic Town Committee debates, I don’t claim to know how everyone is voting, but among those who offered an opinion I’d say Murray has some positive name recognition, Silbert has less but probably has the most potential to grow and Goldberg is generating negative buzz.  Thats my impression , but perhaps I am myopic, having been very focused on organizing the slate and providing support for a local Fundraiser folks did for Deval.

          • I should have clarified: my info about Arlington was purely second-hand, so if  Ed has more concrete info, I’d trust him.  I heard from an elected delegate that Silbert got a “significant” number of commitments having shown up there.  But I have no proof other than the word of my friend, and she was not an organizer keeping a tally.

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            Interesting take on the field, though, Ed!

  10. Medway caucus:

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    About 30 in attendance

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    3 strong Patrick
    2 leaning Patrick
    1 strong Reilly

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    We had a couple of Reilly defections. Great buzz in the room about Tim Murray for LG.

  11. I’m collecting signatures for Bonifaz’s nomination papers at the Cambridge ward 2/4 caucus site, the Senior Center in Central Sq.

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    Ward 2 finished quickly, 6 delegates and two alternates, no contested votes.  It has no ward committee, and 2-2 and 2-3 are MIT campus (we had one student show up, I think), so it was just 2-1 with no Reilly people as far as I could tell.  I don’t even think there was anyone collecting signatures for him.  The biggest intrigue was when Richard Harding, former ward 2 chair, got 14 votes, but the other 2 male delegates got 13 each.  Who voted for just Harding?  He swears it wasn’t him 🙂  Overall, a casual and jovial caucus.  City Committee chair Trellis Stepter ran it.

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    Ward 4 is still going, but their door is locked so I don’t know what they’re up to.  A lot more people there, and I heard rumors that there’s a LaRouchie in the room slowing things down.

    • Cos,

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      You say “Ward 4 is still going, but their door is locked so I don’t know what they’re up to.  A lot more people there, and I heard rumors that there’s a LaRouchie in the room slowing things down.”

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      This is a blatant violation of caucus rules. They must give free access at all times to any registered Dem, the press, or people unable to register (foreign nationals, children, etc.).

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      See rule 8:

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      8. The caucus is an open Democratic Party meeting; no Democrat, person ineligible to register or media representative shall be denied admittance.

      • If you take a look at the next comment you’ll see I was wrong, there actually was an open door and a bunch of the signature collectors from the ward 2 caucus went over there after 2 ended.  I just didn’t see it at first.  But, I know we did lock our door in ward 2 at about 18 minutes after the start, and did deny admittance to one person who showed up a few minutes later.  I thought the rule was, if you’re not there by 15 minutes after the start time, you don’t get in.  Since I posted this comment after ward 2 ended, and ward 4 started at the same time in the next room over, at the time I thought I couldn’t get in, ward 4 had been going for over an hour.  Rule 8 as you quoted it, could apply only to people who show up on time – do you know if it’s meant to apply to people who show up late also?  They can get in even though they can’t vote?

  12. (subject on last comment should say 2&4)

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    I hear Deval swept all the wards in Cambridge except for 1 & 3 which we don’t know the results of yet.  But I can’t confirm that.

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    I did get in to the ward 4 room, I hadn’t noticed a back door.  I entered just in time to heard one of the LaRouche candidates singing!  Deval won here.

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    Trellis, who also coordinates the Deval Patrick campaign in Cambridge, just announced that Deval also swept Somerville and…

  14.   According to the Progessive Democrats of Somerville, Deval Patrick has won all 48 delegates in Somerville. In the caucus I attended (Ward 5) there were no contested races; everything passed on a voice vote.

  15. There are some really crazy people out here in Central Mass…..

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    Just spoke to someone about the PAXTON caucus.

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    After much arm twisting by both Really and Patrick out there – the ENTIRE Paxton caucus has gone for……you guessed it – JOE KENNEDY! Yes, you heard me right.  JOE effin KENNEDY!

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    Something in that Paxton water I’m tellin’ you!

      • Hi Tim –

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        Paxton Caucus was held Saturday. I got the info about the Kennedy vote from the area Deval coordinator who told me when he was looking for our Delgate count.

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        There was also an article in the Worcester Sunday Telegram (telegram.com) about that vote which I will post the link to once their web site is back online –

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        I DID JUST see where they posted the Paxton Caucus as being on 2/7 on the MassDems web site.

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        I wonder if they would have to re-do that caucus?

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        I’ll post the link hopefully this morning (Telegram site has been down over an hour)

    • Paxton Caucus info online  (0.00 / 0)

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      Hi Tim –

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      Additional info from Worcester Telegram here

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      http://www.telegram….

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      Pertinent part here:

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      Worcester County Clerk of Courts Francis A. Ford, who attended the Paxton caucus, said there was unanimity among the approximately 20 people in attendance that neither Mr. Reilly nor Mr. Patrick was capable of beating the Republican ticket in November.

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      Paxton Democrats recalled that state Republicans were concerned early in 2002 that they had a standard-bearer in former Gov. Jane M. Swift, who could not beat the Democrats in a general election. They talked about the effort by some Republicans to draft Mitt Romney, who was running the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City at the time.

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      “It was based on the events of the last week and it was spontaneous on our part,” Mr. Ford said. “We talked about the different things Reilly did last week with Gabrieli and St. Fleur and talked about the Patrick tax issues that might be a problem,” Mr. Ford said.

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      “We said, ‘Why don’t we get smart for a change?’ The Republicans recruited a CEO when they thought they were going to lose, so why don’t we fire the first shot and see if we can get our own CEO right here in Massachusetts?” Mr. Kennedy runs the Citizens Energy Corp., which provides discount heating oil to low-income people.

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      “Are we going to get to October and have someone offer to show her tattoo, or are we going to say there are some basic problems with the top of this ticket, as shown by the events of the past week?” Mr. Ford asked.

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      In her final debate against Mr. Romney in the 2002 race, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Shannon O’Brien made a flippant remark about showing her tattoo while defending her support for lowering the age of consent for abortion to 16. Many of her supporters later speculated the comment cost her at the polls in November.

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      Wayne
      by: Since1792 @ Mon Feb 06, 2006 at 11:02:25 AM EST

  17. It appears that Patrick is sweeping caucus after caucus all over the state.  There is really no common ideological thread.  He is sweeping in Swansea, Stoughton, Rockport, Northampton, Watertown, Plymouth and on and on.

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    The Reilly spin was that these events are dominated by the “Liberals” so that Deval will do well.  That may be the case in some parts of the state, but the same cannot be said in places like Stoughton and Medfield.

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    Patrick has apparently set the grassroots activists on fire.  Bush may have taught us that you can win by appealing to your base.  If that’s the case, Patrick may be on to a formula for victory.

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    If the victory is as widespread as it appears, will there be a drumbeat for Reilly to withdraw?

    • These events are not dominated by the “liberals” they’re dominated by the people who are asked to come out.  If Reilly had put any work into this, he not only would have won a couple of caucuses, but he would have a nice grassroots organization on which to build.  Too bad he didn’t.

  18. All for Deval in my Newton Ward.  As I wrote on my blog (insert shameless prizblog.blogspot.com pimp here), most Reilly supporters offered the “good soldier” justification for their support.  Deval is capturing hearts and minds.

  19. Pleased to report a complete sweep of all seven wards of Salem for Deval Patrick.  Also picked up all of the ex-officio delegates from the city, except for one who is undecided.  The support of our new mayor (Kim Driscoll), state representative (John Keenan), and a majority of our city council was very helpful!

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    On to September!

    • As an addendum – no one showed up for Reilly in Salem.  No one to collect signatures, run for delegate or support a Reilly slate in any ward, to pass out bumper stickers, etc.  Nothing.

      • Ward 19 of Jamaica Plain and Rozzie drew 165 people.  The Deval slate, which included a couple of uncommitteds, won across the board with between 99 and 117 votes.

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        We had three of four Lt. Gov candidates (no Murray), Martha Coakley and John Bonifaz.  Well organized caucus for which chairs Bob Pulster and Karen Payne deserve high marks.

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        Ward 11 had about 65 people, some problems with people not sticking with the agreed to slate, but most for Deval.

  20. The Burlington delegation elected a majority of both men and women delegates for Deval Patrick, whose campaign deserves credit for excellent grassroots outreach.  It was great to see new faces come out for a candidate they believe in.

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    -L&H

  21. Here’s the word from the Cape, courtesy of Paul Hush, Patrick co-ordinator on Cape Cod:

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    Thanks to all for great work on the caucuses today. Not all returns are in on the Cape and Islands but with what is in and what we can realistically project ,Deval Patrick will get about 80% of the Cape and Islands delegates– about 125 out of a total of 157 with most of the “others” being “uncommitted” . The totals include sweeps in Falmouth ( 21 delegates with some 90 plus people appearing! ) , and Sandwich, Wellfleet, Orleans, Brewster, and Nantucket, West Tisbury, and with strong showings and almost sweeps elsewhere.

    • This is really interesting — apparently Patrick’s endorsement of the wind farm didn’t hurt him much on the Cape. Maybe it helped??

      • My impression is that most residents on the Cape actually want Cape Wind… it will lower their energy costs, help their fishing industry, etc.  I’m under the impression, and I don’t live on the Cape so I could be wrong, that most of the outcry is from people who have oceanfront 2nd homes who think that it will ruin the view and their house prices.  So it’s a vocal minority, but one which has deep pockets to spread their message.

          • Your observation is correct. As a Cape Codder who lives on the water (facing the wind farm), but probably won’t be able to see it)I can tell you that my neighbors are apoplectic about it. But our friends who live in other parts of town are nuts in favor of it.

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            But the Cape Cod Times poll you are referring to is misleading. About 20 % of the respondents, expressed no opinion. Given the political climate here, alot of folks keep their (mostly favorable) opinion to themselves.
            That and the fact that it was a telephone poll, skews the results to the luddites who still use land line phones.

      • Deval Patrick’s support of Cape Wind, not only did not hurt him on Cape Cod, it galvanized the supporters of the project to back him. Many of us showed up at the caucuses yesterday.

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        But we, like most Democrats are not one issue supporters. We all come to the debate with interest in issues like  health insurance, local aid, housing, jobs and wages, and the environment.

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        Deval Patrick may have gotten our attention with Cape Wind, but got our support because of his stance on these other issues.

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        But it didn’t hurt (getting us to vote for Deval) that Tom Reilly came out early and hard against Cape Wind.

  22. Hingham (11 delegates) was a clean sweep for Deval… I haven’t heard from any other south shore towns but the only one with a sizeable Reilly contingent is Weymouth and I heard there was going to be a fight there.  Haven’t heard any details.

    • Wasn’t that fun? It went smoothly and the Young Dems from Hingham High did a great job!

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      We should be having a great time in Worcester!

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      Soon I’ll be ripping up your garden if this weather continues pmegan

      • Yes, it was very fun today… though I did feel bad for one particular person who was very upset.  She’ll get in, which makes me feel less bad, but she was obviously hurt.

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        Deval’s sweep is so across the state!  Reilly seems to barely have his needed 15% (though of course with all the party members who automatically get to go and are supporting him it will be much higher).  Today was something of a fiasco for him… I would never have thought that Plymouth would go straight Deval!

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        We’re going to get rid of our leaves soon, and then it will be garden purging time!

        • later in the day. She is putting the blame on the Union’s directions and Reilly’s stumble.

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          She contacted someone at the Union and they told her she could have gone on the slate. Fine time to tell her.

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          I think the unions got creamed today. They wanted to be king makers by going undecided and instead got locked out.

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          My friend in Plymouth said this week that the union people that they had been trying to recruit for months with no luck were calling after you know what asking”Is there still room on the slate?” Uh, no.

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          I walked around my neighborhood and made phone calls and dropped stuff off throughout town and people were horrified about Reilly’s judgement and comments. I just listened and then asked for them to come to the caucus to make sure they would have choice in September.

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          Also she was gratified by the signatures she got on the nomination papers for the town office she’s thinking of running for.

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          She’s confident that she’ll be an add on:she’s going to apply as a Native American.

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          I’ll be interested to see how Weymouth and Hull went. Hull had a competing Deval slate in the works.

          • His stumble singular?  The man’s made more stumbles in the past few months than the proverbial blind man in the dark room looking for his black cat.  He doesn’t have the slightest chance of winning the governor’s office now… his republican opponents could trounce him based solely on 1) the girls who died in the accidents, 2) the Marie St-Fleur “incident” and 3) the ridiculous “I am not a politician” thing.  Even if he keeps his mouth shut for the next 8 months (which seems really unlikely at this point) they hardly need any more amunition to show that he’s incompetenet, out of touch, and an old-fashioned cronycrat.

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            A lot of democrats won’t even vote for him: the sense I get from many democrats is that they wouldn’t vote for him if he was the last candidate on earth.

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            The only hope for the Democrats now is Patrick.  I really hope that someone realizes this and that Reilly steps out of the running.  He’s just made too many mistakes, and he hasn’t even been nominated yet.

            • who also happens to be a Die Hard Dem told me that Deval better win the primary because she will not be voting for Reilly under any circumstances.

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              Did you hear about the PCDL Chair’s breakfast?

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              I went with my husband and the other faithful PCDL guy from our committee was also there. Reilly got asked a softball”Will you support whoever wins the primary in case you do not?”

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              He bristled and got snippy and refused to answer directly; kept insisting that HE would be the winner. He was asked again and danced around the question.

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              He never said unequivocally that he would support the Democratic ticket if by chance he was not on it.

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              John Walsh gets up for Deval Patrick and said “I wrote that slogan (Victory through Unity) I believe in that slogan, I live that slogan. Yes, WE will support the Democratic ticket in November”

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              It has not surprised me that Plymouth County looks like Deval Country

              • Ugh, what a sleaze.  Even if he expects to win, he still can’t pay lip service to the unity that all the dems keep talking about?

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                Actually, that sounds like he’s scared more than anything… if he knew that it was a shore thing he wouldn’t have any problem pretending to support his opponents.  It’s easy to be the bigger person when you actually are… and he doesn’t seem to be.

                • was leaning Reilly NOW is leaning Deval

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                  Sounds like the town that hasn’t shown up yet at Co-Op8 after asking to join

  23. Waltham Ward 7 was swept for Deval, seemed to be a good deal of support in other wards as well. Newton Ward 8 too.

    • Channel 7 just reported that it “looks like Deval is in the lead and shockingly beat Rielly in his hometown, watertown!”

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      YEY!

    • In ward 9 we elected Deval supporters both the male and female delegates as well as the female alternate. The male alternate is undecided but leaning Deval as is the ex-officio. Both were willing to let me put their names addresses and phone numbers down on the list of delegates for the campaign. So not a confirmed sweep, but a potential one.

  24. Lynn, using Cos’s Treo @the Deval event at Orleans in Somerville:

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    We had Reilly AT our caucus makin’ a speech…we had Meehan, Pangie, Rep Kevin Murphy, all bringing supporters, so we had a tough time.  But we got at least 6-7 confirmed Deval delegates, and several alternates, plus we heard some of our ward chairs are for Deval.  — Lynne

  25. A compromise “unity” slate was elected in Boston’s Ward 1 which had 13 of 16 delegates and both alternates going for Reilly, and 3 delegates go for Patrick. I’m personally very happy with the outcome – that the Democrats of East Boston came together and realized that come September 19, no matter what, we’re all going to be on the same team.

  26. Gloucester: 14 Patrick Delegates elected  1 Leaning Patrick Delegate elected 
      7 Patrick Alternates elected  2 Undecided Alternates elected  1 Alternate slot not filled

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    In three nearby towns, clean sweeps for Deval:
    Rockport – 5 delegates, 2 alternates
    Georgetown – 4 delegates, 2 alternates
    Manchester – 3 delegates, 2 alternates

  27. I heard over 200 people showed up. Deval people SUPER organized. Buttons, sheets for handing out even coordinated t-shirts.

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    Reilly supporter State Sen Terry Murray saw her slate for Reilly go down in FLAMES – it even had her daughter on it but to no avail.

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    Deval owned the day in Plymouth – America’s Hometown

    • Wasn’t at the caucus, but I know the people who organized for Deval.

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      The same thing happened four years ago. The people who organized for Patrick did it for Shannon O’Brien then.

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      Murray backed Birmingham that time.

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      We love her, but she just doesn’t do this caucus thing well.

  29. I just walked out of the North Andover Democratic Caucus completely disgusted.  It was run with all the democracy of a Politburo election.  The meeting was called to order and the chair asked if anyone else wanted to run for delegate.

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    I asked if any delegates were supporting Deval Patrick, the person whom I came out to support.  I was told that I was out of order and that they would “walk me through it.”  They then put the names of the candidates on the board and handed out ballots.  There was absolutely no way to know who was supporting which candidates.  None of the delegates made speeches or distributed information.  Only a list of  the “North Andover Unity Slate” was distributed.

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    If this is how establishment Democrats run things, no wonder Democrats can’t capture the corner office.

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    Any North Andover Dems out there who want to shake up the town committee?

    • It sounds like the people running the show were afraid that they weren’t going to get the popular support for their candidates so they decided to just push themselves through!

    • The only way to combat that kind of thing is to come into the room with enough votes to elect another slate.  If the people in the room were all there to elect the establishment, and nobody organized a Patrick slate, you get what you organize.

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      The elections for town committee coincide with the presidential primary in two years.  Meanwhile, the best way to crack a town committee is usually just to show up at meetings.  If they welcome you, bring more friends.  If they are hostile, you have two years to organize an alternative slate.

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      Meanwhile, you should consider joining Progressive Dems. 

  30. Acton sent 10 delegates for Deval. Deval was there just before the caucus began to greet folks but did not give a speech. There was no Reilly presence at all.  According to the Town chairwoman it was the largest caucus turnout in 25 years, perhaps 80 people.

    • Second-hand reports:

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      Silbert: VERY well received amongst the progressives. 

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      Leone: also solidly received.

  31. Tonight Deval appeared in Somerville to some 200 supporters. Also present were the mayors of Somerville, Cambridge and Taunton, Jarret Barios and a host of state reps, aldermen, city councilors, and Pat Jehlan – state senator.

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    Needless to say, it was a pretty upbeat occasion. They are talking about taking the caucuses statewide. I would imagine that gives the Patrick campaign new credibility; that opens it up to better funding and more press.

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    Unless I am mistaken, we got ourselves a horserace.

    • That is quite a cross section of Mayors at the event.  From Progressive Cambride and Somerville to Conservative Taunton.  It’s Ed King and Mike Dukakis in one room.

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      How did Menino do today?  I recall that he had quite a fit for himself when Reich had the temerity to contest a few wards four years ago?

  32. In Townsend we worked hard to gather supporters.  We worked even harder when the rumors started flying around town that a Reilly slate was being put together.  I guess the Reilly folks didn’t work hard enough because we took all 3 delegates and 1 alternate for Deval – we had one more alternate slot that ended up going to an undecided.  We’ll keep working to get him too. 🙂

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    Congratulations to everyone who worked so hard leading up to today.  Enjoy it and then get back to work.  We have a lot to do between now and the election.

  33. All 6 delegates and two alternates are Deval supporters. We were supposed to meet at St. Anthony’s Church but the location changed to 575 Cambridge St. Business went very quickly.

  34. We had 30 turn out with 6 candidates all for Deval Patrick.  Our LG buzz was Deb Goldberg.  One of her staffers is a delegate.

  35. Spoke to a friend who was at Braintree’s Caucus who said candidates were given a couple of minutes and Tim Cahill, Martha Coakley & Andrea Silbert each spoke.  He had not heard Andrea before but he said he was very impressed with her message of job creation and middle-class connection.  Also, he said Cahill and Coakley were very good as well.

    • Don’t keep us in suspense

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      And send someone to the Co-Op8 meeting Monday night in Cohasset at their library at7pm – we voted your town in and we are just waiting for you guys to show up to change our name to the Co-Op9 or another nomiker like the South Shore Democrat caucus

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      Also have you heard anything about Quincy?

  36. A source from within the Murray campaign said they had representatives at over 400 caucus’s throughout the state today. Pretty impressive for a guy who just got in the race full time back in December. He’s not only raising funds at a pretty good pace (needs to improve), but he has an army from all over the state ready for help at his campaigns calling. I dont think any of the other LG candidates field teams can match or even come close to this showing. With the party being so slow at posting the elected delegates, this will give Murray a big advantage over other candidates who wont be able to contact so many delegates quickly.

    • Thanks to the hosts of this site and the people who contributed to it today.  As Adam Gaffin points out on Universal Hub, Boston.com is running an old AP story and few other sites have any decent info today.

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      So great job guys!

      • that the value of this site is being created by all of the folks who post here. Absolutely incredible — and exactly the kind of thing we dreamed about when we started the blog in November ’04 — only better.

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        Many, many, many thanks and huge respect to everyone posting here today.

    • Not so sure that any of the LG candidates can say they have an army just yet.  Of course, if Murray wasn’t the most organized, that would be a problem, given his pedigree.  That said, I beleive Goldberg and Silbert must have contacted every Ward, Town and City chair, because at my caucus, there was no one from their campaigns there (nor from any other LG’s either), yet they both had literature and signature pages out when I got there to help set up (our chair had put them out on the display table where everyone went down the line signing papers).

    • I believe there is a total of 400 caususes in the state, but they were not all held today.  Did they have someone out in Florida or Peru MA?  Also, there was no Murray presence at my caucus, that I at least saw.  The two kinds of stories that I take with a grain of salt have to do with fishing and campaign field organization.

      • There have got to be more than 400 caucuses.  The list of town and ward chairs on massdems.org lists nearly 600 of them.  Perhaps not all of them held / will hold caucuses, but certainly most.  And then there are wards and towns with no committees, who can still hold caucuses, as long as they get 10 registered Democrats from that town or ward to sign a petition declaring a caucus.  That’s what happened in Cambridge ward 2, where I live.  No committee, but we had a caucus.  So I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more than 600 caucuses total.

        • There maybe 600 caususes for all wards and towns, but the number of cauces locations is much much smaller.  Just a quick review indicates the Beverly’s 6 wards all caucused in one location.  Same with Gloucester, Medford, Fall River and I’m sure many other multi-ward cities.  Cambridge, Boston, Somerville and others indeed did hold seperate caususes for each ward in different locations.

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          There are 351 cities and towns in MA.  And a quick look at the list shows a few small towns (like Florida, Peru, Holland and Wales and I’m sure many others) did not hold caucuses.  I downloaded the MassDems info and copied it into excel and I came up with 394 caucus locations.  So when I saw the 400 number mentioned, I’m safely assuming that these two numbers are closer to the number of Caucus LOCATIONS than 600 or more as you suggest.  For example, was your Cambridge Ward 2 Caucus held at the Senior Center , at 806 Massachusetts Ave.?  That is the information I have as part of my number of 394 Causus locations.

      • There are actually over 500 caucus’s around the state. Roughly 50 of them will be held during the following week. Remember that cities usually have more than one caucus.

        • I guess that is my question…I’m sure the Murray people were at more caucuses than the other LG candidates.  I just find it extremely hard to believe they were at 400 of them on Saturday.  First, because I don’t think there are a total of 400 locations.  (If they went to a single Beverly caucus location that had five wards caucusing—are we counting that as one or six?)  Secondly, there was no Murray presence at my caucus (admittedly a small town–although Martha had a person there).  And like I’ve said above, I heard plenty of campaign boosts about huge field efforts, which can never be verified, that try to create a false impression of momentum. And whether we count the actual locations or the number of actual caucuses, by skepticism still stands.

          • I volunteered to cover a few caucuses for the Murray campaign and a few of my friends did as well. And I will say they were very organized. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had someone  representing Mayor Murray at 400 of the 500 something caucuses that FraminghamDem refferred to.

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            Also my friend who was at the Brookline Caucus for Murray said that people in Brookline actually refused to sign nomination papers for Goldberg. Looks like she is not very well liked by some in her own community.

              • Anyone who’s been head of the board of selectmen of any town is going to have rubbed some local activist types the wrong way at some point – especially because Goldberg does not strike me as a shrinking violet.  I wouldn’t read much into that.

  37. About 220 people showed up for the Lexington Caucus.  A Deval slate took all 22 delegates and three alternate positions, and then the chair of the town democractic committee, who is ex-officio, also announced himself for Deval. A great organizing job in Lexington.

  38. Great day in Concord — not only did the Patrick slate win, but there did not appear to be any Reilly slate to speak of (it does make elections easier when they are uncontested). It felt good to be there, and there was an upbeat mood. The town co-chairs are also going as delegates, and they are still officially uncommitted, as far as I know.

  39. Somerville elected 50 delegates city wide.  All are committed to Deval Patrick except one person who declared himself “uncommitted but leaning toward Deval”.  13 Alternates were also elected all for Deval Patrick. 

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    Besides the 50 elected delegates and the 13 elected alternates, we have 7 ward chairs also supporting Deval who go as delegates.  Our Somerville legislative delegation is supporting Deval as well as our Mayor for 3 more delegate votes.  That equals 60 votes for Deval.

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    In addition, Somerville has 9 people who sit on the State Democratic Committee who also get to go as delegates to the convention.  I have not heard how each of these 9 are voting, but I do know that at least half are voting for Deval, the others may or may not be, I just haven’t heard.

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    There should have been 14 alternates, but in Ward 4 they elected a male alternate but did not elect a female.  I was told that the ward chair stated that they didn’t need to.  Another issue in Ward 4 was that the caucus was held at 10:00 am, but the State Party Web Site listed it as being at 2:00 pm.  I think that most people who would have attended the Ward 4 caucus did go at 10, (10 was the time listed in our local newspaper) but who knows if any showed up at 2.  I do know that some campaigns collecting signatures showed up at 2 only to find out the caucus had already happened in the morning.

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    There was a Deval slate in all 7 wards.  No Reilly delegates, no Reilly signature pages, no Reilly presence at all in Somerville.

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    There were signature papers circulated for Pat Jehlen for State Senator, Carl Sciortino and Denise Provost for State Rep, Mike Capuano for Congress, Deval Patrick for Governor, Sam Kelly and Andrea Silbert for Lt. Governor, John Bonifaz for Secretary of State, Jarrett Barrios and Mike Festa for Middlesex District Attorney, Eugene Brune for Registrar of Deeds, Ted Kennedy for Senator, Martha Coakley for Attorney General, Tim Cahill for Treasurer.

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    In Ward 1, 2, 4, and 5 the number of candidates equaled the number of available seats.  There was a contest in Ward 3 for all seats – male, female and alternate.  All were for Deval however.  In Ward 6 there was a candidate who ran as uncommitted and I am told he stated that he was against gun control and against abortion.  He did not get elected.  In Ward 7 there was a contest for male and female, but again all (except the one uncommitted/leaning who actually did get elected) were for Deval.

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    In Somerville in the past four years we have had some heavily contested wards and in Ward 5 we have had up to 100 people.  This year we had about 50+ people in about half of the wards, and about 20 in each of the other wards.

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    This year we all worked hard to be unified for Deval Patrick.  Mayor Joe Curtatone was an early endorser in January and most (perhaps all) of our elected officials are supporting Deval.  The Progressive Democrats of Somerville also endorsed Deval in January.  In the end we all came away pretty satisfied.

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    Sometime after 3:00 pm I got a call telling me that Deval Patrick was coming to Somerville at Orleans in Davis Square at 5:00 for an impromptu rally/party/celebration.  I started calling everyone on the PDS list and sent email.  The Mayor’s people were also calling their people and by 5:00 the place was full for Deval. 

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    Mayor Joe Curtatone, almost all Somerville Alderman and School Committee, Senator Pat Jehlen, Soon-to-be State Representative Denise Provost (If you live in Somerville don’t forget to vote again on Tuesday) were there.  Mike Festa was there for a long time, Jarrett Barrios was there briefly.  Mayor Ken Reeves of Cambridge was there as well as several other Cambridge elected officials.  The Mayor of Taunton was there.

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    Although all went smoothly today in Somerville, it took a lot of organization, negotiation, cooperation and good will to put it all together.

    • Great report.  I have to ask, based on the report above about Tim Murray’s “army” sending people to 400 causus locations…did you see any Murray presence?  I did not see him mentioned in yuour report.

      • I did not see or hear of any Murray presence in Somerville’s 7 caucuses.  I didn’t even hear of any Murray signature pages in Somerville.  I did get reports from all 7 and none mentioned Murray. 

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        As far as I can tell, it seems that Somerville is not even leaning in Any particular direction in the Lt. Gov. race yet.

        • I don’t recall seeing any signature petitions for any Lieutenant Governor candidate at the Ward 6 caucus.  The subject of preferred LG candidate never came up even in the one contested delegate race.

  40. Groton’s caucus went very well.  We had 32 voting Democrats and many others who were there to watch or arrived late and could not vote…:-(  Our entire delegation (five delegates and two alternates) supports Deval.  There were a few enthusiastic Deval supporters in attendance that we had never met until yesterday!  Not a peep from Reilly folks, if indeed, there were any present.

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    Andrea Silbert is the strong favorite for Lieutenant Governor.

    <

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    • Two patrick / goldberg and since we had an uncontested vote I didn’t get a strong opinion from any of the other 4, it didn’t seem like anyone was keeping up with the gov’s race here in tyngsboro.  I went just to get my 2 person slate elected but since there was almost zero turnout, I had a majority over the whole caucus with 10 votes.  I wound up bringing the 3 people who would’ve gone anyways. 

  41. I heard a reporter yesterday say something along the lines of “Tom Reilly’s campaign is saying you spend $1 million just to win on caucus day. And that the people who participate in the caucuses are liberal activists and not representative of the people who actually vote and have an impact on elections.”

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    So let me just say a couple of things about this, because that really pissed me off.

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    First, the only reason the campaign did as well as it did yesterday was because of its volunteers. The campaign has a field staff of exactly one. That’s right. Of all the money they have spent “building an organization,” they have only one full time field person on staff. That is not a criticism of the campaign in any way. I have no doubt that the money they are spending is vital to what they are trying to do. But the reality is that no amount of money can substitute for the hard work of all the volunteers, all the dedicated people who took time away from their lives to actually try to make a difference in our political system. Deval goes around saying that this campaign isn’t about him, it’s about YOU. I think yesterday proves what he means. You should all be so very proud of the work you’ve done. As a volunteer myself, I’ll include myself in that statement.

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    Second. If Robert Reich had swept to a caucus victory four years ago, I could see the idea of this being a day of liberal activists. Do you guys remember what his actual vote count was at the convention? 17%. And he had only 14% on the second ballot. And Grossman and Tollman only made it on the ballot by vote-trading. Anyone who claims that “liberal activists” are taking over the caucuses are spinning for their lives. How the media is eating this up is way beyond me. But from what I can tell, they’ll buy anything the Reilly camp tells them.

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    The reality is that O’Brien won the convention handily 4 years ago, and Harshbarger (barely) won it 8 years ago, and neither can be characterized as the favorite of the liberal activist. I’d even go so far as to say that if either had had any real support from the liberal activists, they probably could have won the general election.

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    Third, how embarrassing is it that a Democrat is running for governor, while dismissing grassroots activism and the Democratic Party in general? Have we not learned from successive presidential elections and gubernatorial elections that you need a field campaign, a grassroots campaign, an army of motivated, energetic, and hard-working volunteers on the ground to win these kinds of races? How is it possible that Reilly has now dismissed the Democratic party faithful, dismissed himself as a politician, and all but dismissed the party in general, all to “spin” himself into a good position with independants? Does the AG really think he’ll be able to win this campaign with nothing more than TV ads targeting the middle? That seems to be the entire campaign strategy. Just how much of a slap in the face is the Democratic party going to put up with from the AG? And does he really expect that after this insult, if somehow he does manage to pull off a primary win, these workers will all turn their attention to help the guy who just insulted them?

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    One other somewhat unrelated note. There was a comment above about slates that didn’t get elected exactly as planned. For any of the rest of you with caucuses left to run, may I give a small piece of advice? If you have a heavily Deval Patrick slate, but you have a couple of Reilly people who you’ve decided to put on your slate for reasons of good relations with the town or ward committee, or with the local political establishment, and you know you’re going to have overwhelming numbers at the caucus on your side, just make sure of one thing. Tell your Reilly people not to be so dumb as to get up in front of a room of Deval Patrick supporters, and declare their alliegance to Tom Reilly, and still expect that slate discipline is going to hold. It just isn’t going to happen, no matter how much arm twisting you try to do. This would seem self-evident, but apparently it was not.

  42. We had 8 Delegates and 2 Alternates.

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    Forty-nine people showed up, a very good showing in this town. 

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    All 8 Delegates and both Alternates elected are Patrick supporters. 

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    It was a clean sweep with no real challenge by Reilly supporters. 

  43. 16 delegates/alternates chosen (including City Chairs).

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    My very rough count:

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    Six pro-Patrick
    Three pro-Reilly
    Seven undeclared or undecided

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    For Lt. Governor, Tim Murray is taking the bulk of the delegates.

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    WF

    • Patrick Holds Edge over Reilly in Brockton Caucuses
      By R Coffin
      Feb 5, 2006, 10:04

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      Volunteers gathering support and signatures
      Brockton – About 300 of the city’s Democrats were at Brockton High School Saturday to  support candidates seeking to get on the ballot this September, and to nominate party delegates to attend the State Convention in June. Gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick appeared to hold a edge over Tom Reilly at the caucus.

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      Patrick strong in Cape caucuses
      CAPE COD TIMES
      With help from an organized and vocal effort Capewide, gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick earned a majority of Cape delegate spots yesterday for June’s Democratic convention in Worcester.

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      On the Lower Cape, Patrick supporters swept most delegate spots, said Kathy Ohman, president of the Cape and Islands Democratic Council. And while Bourne’s Democrats chose supporters of state Attorney General Thomas Reilly for all 10 of the town’s delegate spots, most Sandwich voters were Patrick supporters. In Falmouth, all 21 spots went to Patrick backers.

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      While Reilly’s recent political missteps likely helped Patrick’s cause, Ohman said the former member of President Clinton’s administration had organized a growing campaign on the Cape for months.

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      ”Deval Patrick spent a lot of time down here over the summer,” she said. ”He attracted people down here early on.”

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      In Barnstable, where Patrick delegates yesterday edged Reilly backers for the majority of 24 delegate spots, Patrick supporters were outspoken
      ”I’m supporting Deval Patrick because I’m sick of watching Republicans win the governor’s office,” Michael Tritto told fellow Barnstable Democrats

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      Governor’s race shapes up as turf war At caucuses, Reilly scores in urban areas, Patrick in suburbs
      By MICHAEL LAFLEUR, Sun Staff 

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      Despite recent campaign gaffes, culminating with the embarrassing and abrupt departure of his stated choice for lieutenant governor last week, Attorney General Tom Reilly said he remains confident of his chances for victory in November.

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      If the gubernatorial candidate’s showing yesterday in the Lowell Democratic caucus is any indication, then he may have good reason. A rough count found 48 of the city’s 52 convention delegates had expressed support for him.

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      Reilly, a former Middlesex District Attorney, was expected to do well in urban centers like the Mill City, where the entire legislative delegation and most local officials are pulling for him. Deval Patrick, a lawyer who headed the civil-rights division of the U.S. Justice Department under President Clinton and Reilly’s likely Democratic primary opponent in September, was expected to fare better in the suburbs.

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      That is exactly what happened yesterday throughout Greater Lowell.

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      Patrick captured all the delegates in Acton, Ayer, Bedford, Carlisle, Groton and Harvard — 22 in all — and 11 of 12 in Concord, where the 12th delegate was undeclared.

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      Marie Sweeney, a Democratic state committeewoman for the district that includes Tewksbury, estimated that Tewksbury’s 16 delegates to the state Democratic convention in Worcester in June were split roughly 50-50 between Reilly and Patrick. Dracut reported 13 of its 17 delegates for Reilly, the rest for Patrick

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      Deval Patrick finds heavy support on SouthCoast
      By Jack Spillane, Standard-Times staff writer

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      Deval Patrick, a former official with the Clinton Justice Department and Coca-Cola Co., made a strong showing in SouthCoast Democratic caucuses yesterday.
      Supporters of Mr. Patrick dominated the delegates elected in New Bedford’s Wards 4 and 5, and made strong showings in Dartmouth, Mattapoisett and Fairhaven, as well.
      Unofficial word was that he also bested recently embattled Attorney General Tom Reilly in caucuses across the state.
      While the Patrick forces were highly visible locally, in some cases running as unified slates, backers of the attorney general had little presence in the region. After Mr. Patrick, the next largest bloc of delegates appeared to go to uncommitted delegates.
      “I think Deval Patrick has done a lot of organizational work,” said former New Bedford Mayor John K. Bullard, who was elected a Patrick delegate.

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  44. Somerville’s Ward 5 caucus was a model of getting out the votes for Patrick, but the fact was that everything had gone on behind closed doors, and the meeting itself was a charade.  The mayor’s representative and a spokesperson for Progressive Democrats of Somervile had worked out a deal to give representation at the convention to the two “sides” of Somerville’s active Democrats and produce solid delegation for Patrick.

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    But, partly as a result of this behind-the-scenes effort, when the caucus happened it felt like a falling sandbag. No one bothered to identify the candidates for delegate until after they were elected; none of the candidates identified her/his preference for governor until after the votes and an inquiring mind in the room finally asked; there was no discussion of how the slate had been put together (leading to an awkward moment when a well-intentioned, pro-Patrick person tried to put her name up as a delegate); and no one in the room pushed for anything resembling small-d democracy.

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    Representative Capuano, whom I generally admire, participated in the effort to make this about as perfuctory an event as it could be.  Absent the “smoke-filled” part, it reeked of old-fashioned, back-room politics.  Partly, this was a result of groupthink: even people who ordinarily would be expected to call for a more open and cleaner process got swept along in the chair’s effort to keep it swift, efficient, and closed tight–and in their satisfaction that the popular candidate swept the votes.

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    P.S. I was pro-Patrick, but in retrospect I regret participating in this stunted version of grassroots politics.

    • See my comment in the post about the North Andover caucus.  The way the rules are written, caucuses go to those who organize ahead of time.  They’re not deliberative democratic events themselves.  It can be very frustrating to individuals who go to a caucus without having organized in advance, and find themselves faced with groups who did organize, because those who organized control the outcome entirely.  That’s not a condemnation of them at all.

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      If we had a different caucus process, with different rules, perhaps caucuses could be deliberative democratic excercises themsevles.  What the cacuses we current have are, are tests of organizing ability and strength.  The caucus itself can be competitive if:
      a) Nobody really organized in advance, and people have to work things out right at the caucus (I think this is very rare)
      b) Multiple competing groups organized separately.  The one that brings more supporters, can sweep, but if they’re close, wooing individuals voters who weren’t part of either group can swing the balance, and even if they’re not close, if people don’t stick to slate discipline, it’s possible for some delegate slots to go to a competing slate.

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      A caucus where one group organizes, and no other group does, is not competitive.  All the democracy you’re looking for has already happened, before the caucus: the neighbor-to-neighbor organizing, discussions about who to support, and so on.  The caucus itself is just a formality, and there’s no reason to expect it to be otherwise.

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      Sure, it would be nice if people stated who they support, but what’s the point?  Some of them may be uncommitted.  Any of them might change their minds later.  They don’t need your vote, and there are no options anyway – since the organized group have already agreed, openly, on who they’re all going to vote for, everyone knows that those are the delegates who will be elected.

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      All of this follows from the process set out by the rules, and the ways people have learned to organize within those rules.  Caucuses won’t work differently unless we have different rules.  And those rules are not something the local committee or slate came up with, they just have to work with them as is.

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      Got suggestions for different rules, and a different process for electing delegates?

      • get rid of them?  Honestly, what useful purpose do they serve?  Seems to me that anyone who can collect a set # of signatures should be on the ballot.  More democracy is usually better.

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        As for “delegates,” again, what exactly is the point?

          • I’m delighted that Deval did as well as he did.  My question is a broader one that has nothing to do with what did or did not happen yesterday – I really don’t understand, in the bigger picture of how democracy is supposed to work, what these caucuses and the whole delegate structure is supposed to accomplish.  What’s wrong with letting any candidate who can gather x number of signatures on the ballot?  Why insist that he or she garner an arbitrary percentage of party insiders and/or activists?

            • Because we live in a representative democracy.  Towns elect delegates to select the candidates just as states select electors to vote for the president.

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              Anyways, hasn’t the petition thing proven to be an utterly corrupt system where anyone with enough $ can manage to slide through?  It takes very little money to drum up enough delegates, as Patrick showed: just grassroots activism.

              • Personally, I’m not a big fan of the electoral college.  Nor do I think the 17th Amendment (allowing direct election of US Senators, rather than having the state legislatures elect them) was a mistake.  Do you?

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                Representative democracy is fine as an abstract concept.  But IMHO, it needs to be justified wherever it is used, since by definition it detracts from the people’s direct control over those who govern them.  I have not yet heard a reason why the caucus system is a good idea.  But I’m happy to listen!

                • Because it allows people who have very strong opinions about politics (ie people who are willing to give up a few hours of a Saturday morning) to put all their organizational might to work in support of a candidate.

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                  Most people who vote at polls are farily uninformed and either vote along party lines or upon straight recognition.  People who turn out for caucuses come because they care deeply about a candidate.  That’s the sort of enthusiasm that neither voting at the polls nor a signature campaign will allow.

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                  A signature campaign is the weakest form of “democracy.”  It is, in fact, entierly meaningless now that such campaigns get contracted out to private firms with no interest in the cause and a tendency to engage in unethical/illegal practices.

                • … that those who turn up for caucuses are those who have strong “opinions about politics.”

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                  In Lowell (at least in my ward) it seemed like a number of Reilly folks showed up (and ran as delegates) simply because they was their family duty. (Literally. More than one person at our caucus told me he/she showed up simply because they were told to.)

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                  This certainly reflects good organization on the part of the Reilly team in Lowell — turning out the ground troops and all — but I do not think that necessarily translates into “strong opinions about politics.” Frankly a lot of the people on the Reilly side seemed pretty lackadaisical about the whole thing. (“What? You want me to run as a delegate? Yeah, I guess I’m free that weekend.”)

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                  That being said, I think your point is vaild for the folks who came out in support of Deval at the Lowell caucuses. On the whole I think we were a much more opinionated/passionate bunch; we were just facing an entrenched political machine and simply couldn’t match the numbers in the end.

    • The truly hard part about having real democracy at a caucus is that the process is not geared towads winning if you do that.

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      I know this is pretty obvious, but if there are 10 open seats and the Deval supporters don’t show up with a list of 10 names to support, and the Reilly people do, then you can lose the race even if you’re better organized. If I have 100 people dividing their vote for 15 deval supporters, then I can lose to a Reilly crew of just 70 people running 10 people.

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      So in that sense, what cos said is right on the money. The caucus is won or lost before the caucus takes place. And you spend Friday and Saturday just cementing everything you put in place before that.

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      But I think the most important part of the process is the people who show up. This process has been run by the old timers for decades. The work that has been done to begin the process of taking back the caucuses for the progressive wing of the party, and to bring back people who stopped caring about politics years ago, is just as important as the delegate count. Four years from now, now matter who the governor is, people are going to remember what was done this time around. It will have an impact on the process, because of the number of people who got involved. I hope you all will remember that.

    • WB, I’m sorry you feel regret at the caucus process this year.  I guess we could have had multiple Deval Patrick slates competing in Somerville, but our goal was to try and bring together what often seems like “us” vs. “them” unpleasantness and work together for the ultimate goal which was to Sweep all delegates in Somerville for Deval Patrick.  No one in the Deval campaign wanted to have fighting Deval slates either.  The goal was to be strong and ward off a Reilly slate.  Yes, there was no Reilly slate, but if you don’t come prepared to the caucus you can be surprised.  Two Deval Patrick Slates vs. One Tom Reilly Slate = Reilly Delegates.  If I am not mistaken, you yourself have often talked about the desire to reach out to others in Somerville and show people that we are not as different from each other as they or we might think.  This process was a big step toward that goal.

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      I wasn’t at the Ward 5 caucus, but I made certain that at the Ward 7 caucus that everyone nominated declared who they would be supporting prior to the voting.  Perhaps you or someone else in Ward 5 should have done the same.  If you think something should be done, but you remain silent waiting for someone else to do it…who is to blame?  Everyone apparently forgot or didn’t think it was important, I don’t know.  You were there, I wasn’t.

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      The overall result in the city was that the end number of delegates city wide was split approximately half and half by the former “us” and “them” folks.  Not a bad result.  If we weren’t all supporting the same candidate, I can assure you there would have been competing slates.  As the aforementioned “spokesperson” I can tell you that we all tried to make everyone happy with the slates and it wasn’t always easy.  I am more than satisfied with the end result.

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      There were people in several wards who ran for delegate who weren’t on the slate and some even won.  It was still an open process and you certainly could have run yourself if you wanted to. 

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      Years ago when I was pretty young I was supposed to be organizing a slate for Evelyn Murphy against the slate for Frank Bellotti (no one was organizing for Silber in my town).  I knew my town chair was for Bellotti and couldn’t figure out how I was going to manage it.  Guess what?  I talked with the town chair and we worked something out to split the delegates between Murphy and Bellotti.  Bellotti got more, but this compromise allowed me to get delegates for Murphy and I was pretty sure that in this particular case that I would have lost if I had tried to run my own separate slate.  The multi candidate slate worked.  I was still feeling a bit bad because I thought the Murphy campaign would be disappointed that I wasn’t able to get all the delegates.  Guess what?  They were thrilled that I got what I did and very happy with the results.  If I had done it another way, I would have had nothing. 

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      Sometimes caucuses are about compromise.  Sometimes caucuses are about cooperation and collaboration.  Sometimes caucuses are about a fight.  But most of all caucuses are always about organization.  You have to know what is going to be the best way to get your desired result.

    • I don’t think the pro-Patrick people did anything wrong; I’m fine with slates; I’m fine with off-line organizing; caucuses aren’t elections, but rather one way for people who care a lot to be influential.  What I disliked was simply that people in attendance were not being told what was going on.  It would have been easy.  Someone could have said: Here’s the deal, this is what’s really happening, there’s a slate, this is what we hope the outcome will be, and, especially, HERE IS WHAT YOU ARE VOTING FOR WHEN YOU VOTE IN THIS CAUCUS.  That would have done it for me. And the someone should have been the chair of the caucus. — WB

  45. The Globe article said that Boston went 60% for Reilly. Well, in Ward 21 (Brighton/Allston) we had 14/18 delegates for Patrick and 2 alternates for Patrick. This was the direct result of Patrick’s ward 21 organizers getting a strong turnout and being very well organized. From what I gathered (and I’m not 100% certain about this) at least some of the 4 Reilly supporters were local notables respectfully included in the Patrick-supported slate.

    <

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    The event itself was pretty entertaining, in a chaotic sort of way. There was a large Russian immigrant turnout led by one group leader. The language problems were pretty severe and led to a lot of confusion during the nominating/voting process. The caucus leader did a good job maintaing order, and in the end I think everyone was satisfied that the results were solid. This was my first caucus and I thought it was a great example of local political participation in action.

    <

    p>
    Notable attendees:
    Suffolk DA Daniel Conley
    Former Boston Councilwoman/Mayoral Candidate Maura Hennigan
    Sen. Steve Tolman
    Rep. Michael Moran
    Tim Schofield (lost to Moran for rep by ~56 votes in special election)

  46. STOUGHTON SWEEPS FOR DEVAL PATRICK! 43 Attendees ALL SUPPORTING DEVAL 16 Delegates, 2 Alternates, and 3 Ex Officios for Patrick A Good Day!
    One “Clueless” Reilly Supporter(?) did come in..a young woman in her late 20’s. She approached me and said she sent here to be a Delegate but she wasn’t sure what it was all about or who she was supposed to meet.
    I explained to her that there were basically two choices, Tom Reilly or Patrick Deval and she exclaimed “O’Reilly! That was the Name!”
    I directed her toward the sign in desk (after giving her a handout for Deval, and asking her to read it and consider our candidate).
    She went to sign in, and it turned out that although she was a Stoughton Resident, she was not a Democrat.
    She made a phone call and was last seen leaving the library yelling into her cell phone. It confirmed my belief..Those that came out for Patrick yesterday, did so because they “Wanted To”, Those for Reilly were “Told To”
    That is the Difference between the two campaigns, and thier Cadidates

    • That’s just… bizarre.

      <

      p>
      On the other hand, I have a friend who is very smart and pays attention to the news and she seems to think that his name is O’Reilly.  I haven’t corrected her because there’s the off chance that it’s supposed to be a dig at the Irish Catholic machine behind him and I just don’t get it… but one of these days I am going to have to ask her.

  47. STOUGHTON SWEEPS FOR DEVAL PATRICK! 43 Attendees ALL SUPPORTING DEVAL 16 Delegates, 2 Alternates, and 3 Ex Officios for Patrick A Good Day!
    One “Clueless” Reilly Supporter(?) did come in..a young woman in her late 20’s. She approached me and said she sent here to be a Delegate but she wasn’t sure what it was all about or who she was supposed to meet.
    I explained to her that there were basically two choices, Tom Reilly or Patrick Deval and she exclaimed “O’Reilly! That was the Name!”
    I directed her toward the sign in desk (after giving her a handout for Deval, and asking her to read it and consider our candidate).
    She went to sign in, and it turned out that although she was a Stoughton Resident, she was not a Democrat.
    She made a phone call and was last seen leaving the library yelling into her cell phone. It confirmed my belief..Those that came out for Patrick yesterday, did so because they “Wanted To”, Those for Reilly were “Told To”
    That is the Difference between the two campaigns, and their Cadidates

  48. From a friend who ran in Hopkinton:

    <

    p>
    “We were electing 6 delegates & 2 alternates plus we have 1 ex-officio delegate.  The two alternates are undecided, one of the delegates is leaning Patrick, and all the others are committed Patrick. “

    <

    p>
    Happiness

  49. What’s the word on coverage by the Middlesex DA candidates at the caucuses?  I hear from friends that Festa and Leone were making the rounds themselves at several caucuses, and that Festa had coverage most everywhere.  Also saw Barrios and Festa later in Somerville.  Looks like Festa has a better grass roots organization than anticipated — maybe a sign of strength going forward?  Do you all have reports from your caucuses?

    • We had a Festa supporter gathering signatures. One of they guys in my ward plugged Barrios, but did not have his papers. That is about all I saw.

      • in January. We have not had any other DA candiates at our local DCC meetings, but several of us attended the candidates forum in Weston.

    • from the North Shore Weeklies

      <

      p>
      Patrick backers

      <

      p>
      Support for Patrick seemed more firmly entrenched on the North
      Shore. The entire Salem delegation, including Mayor Kim Driscoll, is
      behind him. In Marblehead, all seven of the women and nine of the 10
      men who sought to be elected delegates endorsed Patrick. The lone
      holdout said he was uncommitted.

      <

      p>
      The Danvers delegation is overwhelmingly supporting Patrick, as are
      all but two of Beverly’s 24 delegates, according to Arthur Powell, a
      coordinator for the Patrick campaign, a member of the Democratic
      State Committee and the chairman of the Ward 5 committee.

      <

      p>
      from the Republican

      <

      p>
      In Western Massachusetts, Patrick declared victory at caucuses in Agawam, Amherst, Belchertown, Northfield, Northampton and Pelham.

      <

      p>
      Reilly’s campaign said the attorney general was ahead in Springfield (32-29, two wards out). Reilly also won Chicopee, Holyoke, Longmeadow, Palmer and Wilbraham.

      <

      p>
      from Marshfield Mariner

      <

      p>
      Support for Deval Patrick, Candidate for Governor, was overwhelming. While many long-standing active members of the Democratic Party were present, there were many new faces, as well

      <

      p>
      Newton Tab

      <

      p>
      Newton saw all 61 elected delegate slots go to Patrick, a one-time Newtonville resident, and none for Reilly. Of the eight ward committee chairs, all but two supported Patrick. Statewide, Patrick bested Reilly, 2-to-1, for delegates. More than 1,000 registered Democrats attended Saturday’s caucus in Newton

    • Mike Combs of DFA-Acton sent an email to the actondfa list last night, saying all 16 delegates plus 1 alternate from Chelmsford are Deval Patrick supporters.  I invited him to post his story here, so hopefully he will later today.

    • The Chelmsford Caucus drew 60 people to select 16 delegates and 2 alternates. (We send 17 delegates, but one is ex-officio or something like that.)

      <

      p>
      Do you want the results or the story? The result was that every delegate we ran was elected. That’s 16 delegates and 1 alternate for Deval. If we’d had a male alternate we’d have won that too. The town regulars (mostly DTC members) were stunned, since none of them were elected as delegates.

      <

      p>
      The town chair and really all of the DTC regulars were Reilly supporters.

      <

      p>
      After nominations, candidates stood at the front of the room and gave a 1-3 sentence speech. The Deval candidates were all wearing Blue Deval Patrick stickers; no candidate wore a Reilly button and I didn’t hear anyone say directly that they were Reilly supporters. (My wife told me later that some of the women candidates did, but they were hard to hear.)

      <

      p>
      In most of the candidates speeches they said they’d support either Patrick, or they said they’d support whomever won the primary. That seems obvious, but I’d heard from several people that they were afraid that “after Patrick loses the primary, his supporters will pick up their stuff and go home”. I remember hearing this about the Reich campaign and Dean campaigns, too.

      <

      p>
      A few of the Patrick supporters remembered to say why they supported him (local aid, for example, which is a very hot issue in Chelmsford right now), but I’m one of the people who just forgot to say anything like that. I’ll practice in front of a mirror next time.

      <

      p>
      The Patrick supporters worked against a slate and the delegates brought additional friends to support the slate. In the end, the entire slate of 16 Deval Patrick delegates was elected! We didn’t have an alternate man to nominate, but we nominated a woman alternate and won that spot too!

      <

      p>
      I’m certain that building a voting the slate was a big part of the win, but the real key was having delegates bring additional people to support them. I took a preliminary and partial count, and my guess was that we had 31 Deval Patrick supporters in the room of 60 people… yikes!

      <

      p>
      This was basically the effort of six people, a couple of us (myself & Scott O’Neil) new to town, and four people (Anita Saville, Susan Gates, Kathy Brough, and Fran McDougal) with a long history of activism who could vet the list of delegates and help us network to find a few more.

      <

      p>
      We’ll be celebrating at the Drinking Liberally event in Lowell next Wednesday, so drop by if you’re in the area.

        • Deb Goldberg was there, as was Susan Fargo, Tommy Golden Jr., and Jeff Hall. But I’m afraid I said hello to Susan Fargo and spent the rest of my time talking to delegates and supporters. I was nervous as hell.

          <

          p>
          As it was, I screwed up at least three things, but we carried the day anyway. I’ll make different mistakes next time.

          <

          p>
          Our Deval slate hasn’t even spoken to each other about candidates for the other state-wide offices.

          <

          p>
          …mike

        • In most of the candidates speeches they said they’d support either Patrick, or they said they’d support whomever won the primary. That seems obvious, but I’d heard from several people that they were afraid that “after Patrick loses the primary, his supporters will pick up their stuff and go home”. I remember hearing this about the Reich campaign and Dean campaigns, too

          <

          p>
          Yes, this is a recurring theme, but my views on it have evovled.  A lot of new progressive activists are motivated by finally being able to get behind a “real Democrat”, as a challenge to what they/we see as Democrats who aren’t actually standing up for Democratic positions.  And especially in Massachusetts, where we have an old-school Democratic clique and a bunch of new groups and all this tension between the old and new, it’s not surprising that it makes people nervous about just that: if progressives are so motivated by frustrating with the existing leadership, how can we support the establishment’s candidate when our candidate loses?  I’ve heard this so often that for a while it became ingrained: The old school clique and their supporters show & value party loyalty, the new progressives don’t so much.  And that’s okay, to a point: party unity is one tool in the arsenal we need to accomplish our political goals, but there are other tools that can sometimes outweigh it.

          <

          p>
          But what I’ve learned is that it’s actually not true.  When the progressive loses to the establishment candidate, progressives are motivated in proportion to how bad the general election opponent is.  If we’re running against Bush, we’ll work our asses off to try to beat him, even though Dean lost and Kerry won.  But even if there’s weak motivation, we tend to continue to support the Democrat, just with less time and energy and passion than we would have for a candidate we loved.

          <

          p>
          On the other hand, the establishment clique’s supporters (not the leadership) are not loyal when they lose.  Time and time again I’ve seen this, from Vinnie Ciampa’s ugly sticker campaign against Carl Sciortino, to the fact that a significant portion, perhaps even a majority, of Joe Mackey’s voters voted for Republican Bill White in the general.  Democratic leaders worry publically about us, a lot, but really, it’s their voters who tend to be the sore losers.

  52. Cape Wind and Deval Patrick  (0.00 / 0)

    <

    p>
    While polls on The Cape showed the wind farm a toss-up for voters (45% pro, 45% con, 10% no opinion), it’s an issue which move feet to the ballot box as last Saturday’s Democrat caucuses demonstrated where Patrick did four times as well as he did state-wide. A previous pol was so flawed a local reporter quit the daily which ran it, see http://CapeCodToday…. under What’s Hot, “Why I quit The Times by Jack Coleman at http://www.capecodto…

    <

    p>
    In the rest of the state a wind farm off cape Cod is a shoo-in, and you can bet your ballot-box than Patrick’s highly tuned and efficient staff researched it thoroughly before he endorsed it last October.

    <

    p>
    The guy is the real deal and will coast to an easy victory in November.

    <

    p>
    Blog Father
    by: bestread @ Thu Feb 09, 2006 at 18:37:38 PM EST

    <

    p>

      Cape Wind and the Governor’s Race  (0.00 / 0)

      Deval Patrick’s support of Cape Wind, not only did not hurt him on Cape Cod, it galvanized the supporters of the project to back him. Many of us showed up at the caucuses yesterday.

      But we, like most Democrats are not one issue supporters. We all come to the debate with interest in issues like  health insurance, local aid, housing, jobs and wages, and the environment.

      Deval Patrick may have gotten our attention with Cape Wind, but got our support because of his stance on these other issues.

      But it didn’t hurt (getting us to vote for Deval) that Tom Reilly came out early and hard against Cape Wind.
      by: spyro @ Sun Feb 05, 2006 at 11:18:08 AM EST

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