In 2016, I briefly toyed with the idea of publishing a podcast about politics under a pseudonym. This script was the first we wrote – about caucuses and the chaotic world of local politics. If you’re just looking for up-to-date info about the 2020 elections, I would STRONGLY recommend keeping a close eye on the New York Times as primary voters and caucus goers finalize their decisions: https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/2020-election
If you’re looking for a little more … here’s it is:
MINORITY! Podcast – Script 1
Hi, This is Zoey Hunter, and you’re listening to the first episode of Minority, with an Exclamation Point.
So, let me tell you super quickly who and I am what’s up with this title.
I’m a state legislator, that’s a politician, from a very small state where I’m in the minority political party. That means I’m in the party with less people than the other party aka the majority party. And, my job is to be the Minority Leader, meaning I’m the leader for my party – elected by my peers – in the State House.
I happen to be the youngest female leaders in the United States (at least at the time of this recording), and I’m also one of few elected Asian Americans.
That’s why I went with Minority as a title, and that’s why I think earn that exclamation point on the title. I’m a young half-Asian woman in very small state where I’m a member of a very small political party.
But, even with all those Minority statuses, I’ve been fortunate to be elected by my constituents and my peers, and to be on this political adventure that I want to share with all of you. Especially, in such a contentious year for politics. My goal has always been to get new, diverse voices involved in politics, and I’m hoping that maybe my perspective – my frustrations with politics, my belief in a better way and my inside view of the system – will encourage you to see politics a little differently and maybe help me change it.
Now, my last disclosure is this. My name’s not actually Zoey Hunter. Like I said, I’m an actual politician and I’m sure from all the information I just gave you can deduce who I am. But, in a world where every single word I ever say gets scrutinized, I thought it would be nice to use a pseudonym and, at the very least, not have every google search on my real name pull up this podcast. The pseudonym helps me be bluntly honest and hopefully refreshingly raw.
So, enough about me, let’s talk about what everyone in America under the age of 50 is asking, what the hell is a caucus? And, why does everyone care about Iowa and New Hampshire?
But, before we get there, let me warn you of this. Democracy is messy.
In the first year that I was elected, we had to vote on a very contentious bill. Contentious like if we were trying to ban cheeseburgers contentious. Each of our offices got thousands of calls and emails asking us not to pass the cheeseburger bill, and many of us didn’t know how we were going to vote.
Now, on the first day of the Cheeseburger vote, a rumor went around on the House floor – which you can imagine pretty much like a high school classroom. Everyone sits and talks in their own little groups and watches who’s talking to who until the Speaker of the House – the guy in charge of all of us – tells us it’s time to sit in our assigned seats and vote.
So, anyway, a rumor goes around on the House floor that our first vote on the bill, which is called a first reading vote, is going to get used against us in the next election by people that don’t want us to ban cheeseburgers. Usually, that’s exactly how politics is. There’s always someone waiting to use your votes for you or against you.
The problem with using a first reading vote is that there’s no way to vote no. Because all a first reading vote means is that we’re voting to read the cheeseburger bill. Not voting to pass it, voting to read it. Since no one ever votes against reading a bill, there’s not even a mechanism to vote no. But, the rumor was, people didn’t even want us to read the cheeseburger bill.
So, someone developed the plan that the only way to avoid having our names associated with this first reading of the cheeseburger bill was to be absent when it took place. Then the record wouldn’t show that we were there to read the bill.
I’m ashamed to say – I participated in this odd boycott of the reading and me and my Minority and Majority colleagues left the floor and crowded near the doorways so we’d know when it was safe to go back.
But, just as we thought we were safely absent, another colleague went rogue, got on the microphone and executed a new plan. She said she wanted everyone to vote to change the rules so that we could vote against reading the bill. After a quick 30 second discussion huddled in the doorway, a number of my colleagues went running back to their seats to vote worried that if they didn’t get back on the floor to help her change the rules, the cheeseburger people would say they didn’t try hard enough to stop the Legislature from reading the cheeseburger bill. I stayed near the door. I thought it was a stupid plan and besides, I don’t run fast enough.
People start running back to their seats to vote to change the rules so that we can vote against reading the cheeseburger bill. But, no one makes it to their seats before the vote is taken, and people end up running around on the floor with their hands raised – because it’s a vote that you take by raising your hand.
The vote to change the rules fails and now it’s time to vote on reading the cheeseburger bill. But, most people are still back on the floor. Instead of waiting for people to leave again, Speaker goes straight into taking the vote to read the cheeseburger bill. To this day, I still remember 50, 60, 70 year old men running red faced and panting toward my spot at the doorway still awkwardly raising their hands up and down in a kind of flapping motion not even knowing any more what they were voting on, just knowing that they had to get away as fast as they can. That, my new friends, is democracy.
Now, I tell you that story because the caucus and primary processes are a bit of a mess too. So, it’s worth knowing that every part of democracy is messy and sometimes even a little silly.
So, a caucus is basically a group of people of the same political party or who have similar goals or viewpoints getting together to have a meeting. No one seems to definitively know where this word came from, but it is a funny sounding word. Caucus.
Political parties and politicians hold caucuses for all sorts of things, but right now, if you’re hearing the word caucus, you’re likely hearing it in reference to the 2016 Presidential Election.
So, as you probably know, there are a handful of Democrats running for President – including Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders – and a ton of Republicans – including Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush and a bunch more.
Before, we can elect a new President in November, each political party needs to narrow down their choices to just one candidate each. And, the beginning of that process is called either a primary or a caucus. The end of the process is called the National Convention, which is a meeting that happens in late Summer where people or delegates from each state gather to take a final vote on who should be the party’s presidential nominee. It takes 2382 delegates to win the nomination at the Democratic National Convention, and 1237 delegates to win the nomination at the Republican National Convention. The process of collecting delegates for the National Convention starts with either a primary or a caucus in each state.
First, let’s talk about primaries because they make more sense. The New Hampshire primary – which is the first primary of the election season – is happening this week. In a primary, voters who identify with a particular party cast ballots for their favorite candidate in that party’s field of candidates. It’s just like a regular election. Lots of states have primaries instead of caucuses because it’s a simpler process. The number of delegates that your candidate gets depends on the percentage of votes they receive in the primary.
New Hampshire is given 32 Democrat delegates and 23 Republican delegates, and the primary will determine how many of those delegates will be allocate to each candidate. So, if the vote between Bernie and Hillary is 50-50 then each will walk away from New Hampshire with 16 delegates to add toward the total of 2382 delegates that they’re trying to reach by the end of summer. [In 2020, New Hampshire Democrats will have 24 pledged delegates and Republicans will have 22.]
States like Iowa – which had the first caucuses of the election season last week – use the caucus process instead of the primary process. It’s a long tradition and quite frankly seems kind of fun and chaotic in a uniquely American way.
So, like I said, a caucus is basically a meeting of people. In the case of the Presidential caucuses in Iowa, the state is divided up into different areas or precincts and the people from those precincts go to their respective party’s meeting or caucus in their area. Imagine something like 50-100 people gathering in a local elementary school cafeteria. That’s a caucus.
For Republicans, the process is pretty simple. They all get into one big room, candidates or their volunteers make speeches trying to persuade people to vote for them and then people in attendance cast ballots – sometimes just by writing a name on a little piece of paper. Sort of like voting for student body president in high school.
At the end of the night, all the vote totals are added up and Iowa’s 30 Republican delegates are allocated according to the percentage that each candidate won. For example, Ted Cruz won 27.6% of the vote in Iowa so he got 8 of Iowa’s 30 delegates. Now, Cruz has 8 of the 1237 votes he’ll need to win the Republican nomination at the end of the summer.
For Democrats, the process is a little crazier. Like Republicans, Democrats all get into one big room and hear candidates or their volunteers make speeches. But, instead of voting with secret ballots, they physically divide up based on who they support. So, if you support Bernie Sanders, you go to one side of the room or a different room – depending on the location. If you support Hillary Clinton, you move to another side of the room. If you don’t know who you support, you stay in the middle and candidates and campaign volunteers try to persuade you to come to their side of the room. [Updates to the process in 2020 will include the use of paper ballots to track participation]
Now, if you are in a group for a candidate that doesn’t have enough people, say if you were in Martin O’Malleys group with only two other people, then at a certain point the people helping at the caucus location would tell you that your candidate wasn’t viable – aka they have no chance of winning – and you could rejoin the people in the middle or go to the Bernie or Hillary group. Now, to add to the excitement, some of the caucus locations came out completely even and the tie needed to be broken by a coin toss. Another grand American tradition. [This is something Democrats are trying to avoid in 2020]
At the end of the night for Iowa Democrats, they get an estimate of how many of their 44 pledged delegates will be allocated to each candidate [Note: In 2018, Iowa will have 41 pledge delegates]. But, unlike Republicans, Democrats in Iowa have a couple more meetings and votes before they have their official delegate counts. But, the estimates are usually correct, so for now, one can guess that Hillary Clinton with 49.9% of the vote in Iowa has 23 of the 2382 delegates she needs.
So, those are caucuses. They are messy, they are chaotic and they are the root of democracy – coin tosses and all. At the end of the summer, the individual decisions that were made in the Iowa caucuses will determine who gets nominated from each party for President.
Of course, the decisions made in both Iowa and New Hampshire determine a lot more than just who won those states. They determine which campaigns will continue to get media coverage, which campaigns will continue to get volunteers and which campaigns will get funding from major donors. When you look at the numbers, winning 8 delegates in Iowa doesn’t seem like a big deal for Ted Cruz since he’s got 1229 more delegates to win, but the boost of attention that he got from winning the first vote in the nation will bring him money, voters and media going into the other 50 states he still needs to win.
Money and media plays such a huge role in politics and these early state caucuses and primaries are the places where campaigns either gain momentum or fall apart. But, we’ll talk more about that later.
For now, thanks for listening to this first episode of Minority with an Exclamation Point. This is Zoey Hunter, and I promise I’ll stop saying exclamation point – maybe.
If you want to read more about the 2020 Iowa Caucus Math … this is a pretty comprehensive article: https://www.vox.com/2020/1/30/21083701/iowa-caucuses-results-delegates-math