Technical difficulties and communication snafus bogged down Saturday’s local Democratic caucus, but nearly 200 Haines residents toughed out the chaos to make sure they would have a say in who becomes the Democratic nominee for president.
Their choice was loud and clear: Vermont senator Bernie Sanders garnered 169 votes, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took 25.
Because Haines was part of the larger House District 33 caucus, local volunteer Melissa Aronson was connected telephonically with caucus coordinators in Juneau, Skagway and Gustavus.
“You’ve got the speakerphone going, you’ve got noise from all of the people. It was just all garbled,” Aronson said. “We all learn life lessons no matter how old we are, and one of them (that I learned) was not to do that again. The communication was really awful.”
House District 33, which had the highest caucus attendance of all the districts with 1,013, tallied 837 votes for Sanders (82.6 percent) to Clinton’s 176 votes (17.37 percent). Sanders also cleaned up statewide, taking 79.6 percent of the vote compared to Clinton’s 20.2 percent, according to the Alaska Democratic Party’s website.
At one point during the local caucus, Aronson made the personal decision to switch her vote from Sanders to Clinton for “a strategic and not totally appreciated reason.” Clinton was one vote away from reaching the 15 percent required to remain a viable candidate in the caucus, which would have required another vote for the Clinton supporters to redistribute themselves.
“At this point now it is close to 11:30 a.m.,” Aronson said, and some people had been present since 9 a.m. “We had people beginning to leave and everyone was antsy to get on with their day so the easier thing to do that I felt honored peoples’ time the most was to change my vote to Hillary. To not vote that way would have meant we would have gone to a second fan-out.”
The decision drew loud jeers from Sanders supporters in the audience. “A lot of people have contacted me to thank me for what I did in trying to keep this thing organized, and that they may not have agreed with my decision, but understood it. Only one person sort of came unglued,” she said.
Jerry Pyle was one of the few who caucused for Clinton. Pyle said his choice was strategic, as he doesn’t think Sanders will be able to carry critical states in the general election if he were to win the nomination.
“I don’t think that Bernie can win. Bernie is very popular here, he’s very popular in Washington state, but two of the critical states he is weak in are Ohio and Florida, and those are essential to electing a Democrat. If you don’t win those states, you don’t win anything,” Pyle said.
Pyle attempted to explain this reasoning at the caucus, but prefaced his remarks with a reference to Sanders being Jewish. He was booed down before he could continue to state he believes that fact is connected to Sanders’ ability to win in Ohio or Florida, which have large Muslim populations, he said.
“I am certainly not bigoted,” Pyle said, adding that he prefers Clinton because of her more middling politics and likelihood of being better able to navigate a deadlocked Congress.
Melina Shields said it’s been several years since she last caucused, but the last one she attended in Haines seemed to go more smoothly than Saturday’s. That’s likely because there were fewer people in attendance, she said. (Volunteer organizer Aronson was expecting about 20 people and got nearly 200).
Shields said she observed many people change their party affiliation from “Independent” or “Unaffiliated” at the door.
“I support Bernie because he is running a grassroots campaign funded by real people making small donations. He is not funded by big industry or billionaires to whom he will be indebted to in the future by receiving monies from. I feel like he is the candidate with my best interests in mind. He wants to revive the middle class and take care of the people of this fine country,” Shields said.
Kai Hays, 18, was participating for his first time in the electoral process. Hays said the caucus was “kind of crazy” but he was grateful Sanders carried the day.
Issues like wages and the cost of college are important to young voters like him, Hays said. He said he also liked Sanders’ call for campaign finance reform and that Sanders “sticks to his guns.”
“The main thing that really matters to me is our generation is kind of pissed off,” including because it won’t do as well financially as the generation that came before it, he said. “Hillary is quite a flip-flopper. She hasn’t even tried to address the issues that are important for my generation,” Hays said.
Though Aronson ended up voting for Clinton to expedite the process and thinks the Democrats have two “tremendous” candidates running, she tends to lean toward Sanders because of his position on economic equality and environmental issues.
If running the caucus taught her anything, it’s that the system is outmoded and desperately needs an update.
“It’s based on the idea that people haven’t had a chance to talk to each other ahead of time, so you can get together and convince each other of the merits of your candidate. Of course, with social media now, that’s kind of a joke,” she said. “All you have to do is go to Mountain Market or the post office or Main Street and people will be busy influencing each other on the vote.”
Aronson said she hopes the Alaska Democrats can come up with a more modern system that takes into account the state’s unique geography and the associated communication issues.