Salt Lake County Republican Nominating Convention

In my own normal fashion, it has taken a couple of days to gather my thoughts on the subject. No doubt many of you who found my post dug up all the stuff Deseret News and the SL Trib and were disappointed by the lack of thorough reporting. As a county delegate who attended, I can report on at least those portions I was part of.

The convention opened at 8 o’clock in the morning, and despite the early hour for a Saturday, it was jammed with hundreds of convention goers right at opening. I was among those who got there that early. The first order of business was to get registered. Registration included receiving our credentials and ballots.

It was hard to move around the area where the booths were situated. They were placed in an area that was relatively small compared to the rest of the floor. Couple that with people gathering around the candidates campaigning, and it was a veritable madhouse.

Much excitement that day has to attributed to the U.S. Senate Candidates who set up booths in an attempt to sway the county delegates one way or the other, despite the fact that we county delegates won’t be voting in the state convention. Public recognition is very powerful in the middle of a political campaign. I decided to observe some of the candidates. The two who had the biggest crowd around them were Bob Bennett and Mike Lee. Bennett seemed to be defending himself to most of the delegates who were badgering him about his votes and stances. What seems to be clear with Bennett is that even though a higher percentage of regular voters still favor Bennett more than the State Delegates do. Even still, Bennett is still behind Mike Lee for the regular voters. Mike Lee seemed to be presenting himself very well. He was very interested in answering as many questions as possible. His time spent around federal judges and in and around D.C. has been spent very well in gaining an understanding of how Washington works, and how to get things done there.

The convention started on time, which was nice, compared to the caucus meeting. It did, however take a long time to get regular business done. First, there were some utterly stupid challenges to the agenda, most of which I don’t even remember. Once we finally got the agenda adopted, it then took a while to move through the reports. One report was almost an hour late. Then we had to sit through nominating speeches, which were two or three minutes longer than I would have liked. The only reason they have those speeches is because we all know that there were a ton of delegates who didn’t attend any candidate meet and greets and were still trying to decide who to vote for. That was slightly annoying in light of that realization.

We finally got down to voting. It was a little bit better this time round as far as the voting was concerned. This year, the Republican party sprang for electronic vote counters. The only annoying part was waiting in line to put my ballot in the ballot box. It took nearly  an hour to count them all, but considering it took three to four hours before, it was nice. K. Wayne Cushing won the nomination for treasurer, and Richard Snelgrove and Winston Wilkinson will go to a primary for county counsel.

Next was the legislative district breakouts where we would select who our candidtates would be for the state house of representatives. My leg. district is 42. We had two outstanding candidates, Myron Burnett and Jim Bird. Our district chair handled this breakout very well. There were many who proposed various rules and changes. One of the more popular proposals was to allot nearly twenty minutes total to questions and answers despite there being three or four minutes for a short speech. We voted it down, just barely. It was a twenty-seven to twenty-nine vote. I was pleased to hear one argument against the proposal, voiced by Mayor Mellisa  Johnson. She argued that we as delegates(she was a delegate too) had plenty of time to pose question to the candidates, and if we didn’t take the time we had to do it, then tough. We were here to vote. We voted, finally, and Jim Bird(who is the incumbent) won by taking 69 % or so of the vote. It was very hard to choose because both men would do a great job at the capitol.

After that, I had had enough of endless proposals and rule changes. The only things that were left on the agenda were resolutions, and so I decided to leave. All in all, it was an eventful day. Even though I am one who has always been interested in politics and such, that day I decided that I could never sit through endless bickering and debate that goes on in any legislature. I don’t have the stomach for it, and hope I never will.

~ by Daniel Crowder on April 27, 2010.