THE 7TH DISTRICT STRECH, PART ONE
I’ve been doing some homework on the race for the 7th Congressional District, mainly the mechanics of how all this is going to work. The race on the Democratic side is obviously more interesting than the Republicans because there are more characters involved. But here is how it is going to work. There are 590 precinct committeemen eligible to vote in the special Saturday caucus. However a candidate only needs a majority of the committeemen present to win and assuming all eight candidates who have been named show up, they will fight for those votes. Think of it as “political Survivor.”
The ballots are cast and the lowest vote getter is eliminated. The party will then do another round of voting and the lowest vote getter will be eliminated and so on and so on. So we could literally see eight rounds of voting on Saturday. And take note, the voting will be done on electronic voting machines which will need 30 minutes to be reset after each round of voting, so this could take a few hours. And in those 30-minute windows expect some serious lobbying to be taking place.
While I still think the dynamics inherently favor Carson, the more I talk to local Democrats the more resentment there is toward the way he is being presented by local power brokers as the “heir apparent” to his late grandmother’s seat. There are even accusations that the County Democratic organization has been using employees and other office resources to contact precinct committeemen to convince them to vote for Carson, much to the chagrin of other candidates.
I argue if Carson doesn’t get more than 40-percent of the precinct committeemen vote on the first round, he is going to have some serious issues. Because he will have to find votes from people who want someone else.
I plan to live blog from the event so check back here this weekend.
Registration starts at 8:45 a.m. and the voting begins at 10 a.m.
