Being a Republican at the Maine Democratic Presidential Caucus

My mother, Joyce Halford, was a rarity at one Maine Democratic Presidential Caucus on Sunday, February 10th. She is a registered Republican. It was her duty to attend. She is Town Clerk and Registrar of Voters for our rural central Maine town. We are representative of many small towns struggling in winter bound Maine.

Dedicated voters ventured out state wide in a snowy, wind whipping day to exercise their rights, add their voices and try to make a difference.
A second rare thing was the fact that our town was even holding a Democratic Caucus or any meeting for that matter as they have not met formally for years. Nine of our registered Democrats made the effort to stand up and represent their party for our town and intend to renew a committee and become active as a group. The nine (plus one Republican) even traveled to the town of Canaan to share a meeting place at the Canaan Fire Department building.

The Caucus participants were greeted by Mr. Craig Heavey the Covenor of the event. Each town was given thirty minutes to register participants. The Town Clerks had to verify that they were registered voters and that they were recorded in the Federal Voter List data base. My mother later informed me that a man registered to vote at the session.

I maintain the voter list on line for our town. It has to be on a Federal data base. The voter is listed; name, address, party or non enrollment and history of active or inactive voter status. I am the Deputy Town Clerk and Deputy Registrar of Voters. I am appointed to this volunteer position. The Registrar of Voters is an elected position which is voted on every three years. The Town Clerk is elected in a yearly election.

It is recorded that just over 300 Democrats voted in our last Governor's election. For each one hundred voters a town or city gets one delegate to the Maine State Democratic Convention at the end of May. This gives out town three delegates.

After the registration the Covenor called the Caucus meeting to order. The two towns separated to discuss candidates, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Barack Obama. The only Hartland attendee in the 20 something age bracket expressed concern that Obama did not have enough experience having served only one term. My mother could at one point hear the discussion in the next room and told me that an older gentleman from Canaan was saying that , after all Bill has been in there, he knew what he was doing.

A woman's voice piped up, he's not running. To which the man stated, he can give her advice.

Both groups were taking this very seriously. Our small group continued discussing the candidates, choosing their delegates and voting for their candidate in what my mother described as an "interesting and nice meeting." We Mainers have been watching, reading, gleaning news and information. We saw both candidates quickly gather large crowd Saturday in our state. The town of Hartland chose Hillary Rodham Clinton at our Maine Presidential Caucus.

Throughout the evening I kept checking results at Bangornews.com/news and onlinesentinel.com. WABI TV announced that Obama had 2,079 votes, Clinton 1,396 at 11:30 p.m. Maine has 24 delegates to send to the National Democratic Convention in August. Obama has 15 of these delegates.
Delegates chosen represent the views of those who take time to attend.

The one Republican at the Hartland Maine Democratic Caucus returned home, put some wood in the stove, made a cup of tea and waited for my phone call to let me know we still have a lot of election work yet to come.