Caucus turnout in La Plata County and around Colorado was heavy on Tuesday evening, especially for the Democrats, as the state joined a dozen other states taking the pulse of voters on Super Tuesday.
Bernie Sanders was the clear winner at the Democratic caucus at Precinct 21 at Sunnyside Elementary School, where nearly 50 people showed up to participate. Last year, the precinct caucus drew three voters.
Despite being the underdog at the precinct, one Hillary Clinton supporter said: “I think it is time for us to really open up to the fact women need to be in power.”
In Durango, 10 people were at the Republican caucus for precincts 1, 2 and 3, including two young people who came to observe. The participants voiced some disgruntlement at not being allowed to make an official vote for a presidential candidate.
“This doesn't mean anything, why are we here?” said Ray Baranowski, one of several first-time attendees.
Katie Aggeler said she has attended every caucus she could.
“What happened?” she asked. “I'm really disappointed we're not voting.”
The group was struggling to find enough people to serve as precinct captains for the next two years and delegates to the La Plata County Republican Assembly on March 14.
“There will be a lot more in attendance at the Republican precincts out in the county,” Precinct Captain Sidny Zink predicted.
Colorado's caucuses, sometimes called a hybrid of a primary and a caucus, are a different animal than Iowa and Nevada, the previous caucus states, particularly for the Republicans this year.
The Colorado Republican Committee decided in August that it would not conduct a preference poll for presidential candidates because of a fear that delegates would be committed to a candidate that later dropped out of the race. The committee decided to have an uncommitted delegation, which will give it flexibility come national convention time at the end of July.
“The Colorado GOP has approximately 42,000 preregistrations, with more rolling in for caucuses tonight,” said Kyle Kohli, communications director for the Colorado Republican Committee, in an email early Tuesday afternoon. “We expect to roughly meet or exceed 2012's turnout of approximately 60,000.”
The committee did not expect the lack of an official straw poll to affect attendance, he said.
A number of precincts planned to conduct an unofficial straw poll, La Plata County Republican Central Committee Vice Chair Ginny Chambers, said, but the committee did not expect to have the results tabulated until Wednesday or Thursday.
Several La Plata County Republicans, a few of whom planned to submit resolutions to make Colorado a primary state for Super Tuesday, were not happy with the state GOP's decision.
“It's kind of ironic,” said La Plata County Democrats Chairwoman Jean Walter, “because if we didn't have caucuses, if we just had a primary, they couldn't submit a resolution.”
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