The Mac Weekly

Issue date: 2/5/10 Section: News

Media Credit: Yenee Soh

The Feb. 2 gubernatorial caucus for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Kagin Commons was strikingly different from the presidential caucus held in the same building in fall 2008. Whereas the fall caucus saw nearly 1,000 attendees and general chaos, Tuesday night's meeting was a quiet affair involving about 40 Macalester students and neighbors-not even enough to fill all of the precinct's delegate slots for the senate district convention in March.

The difference, speculated caucus volunteer Nate Wegmann '10, is that this caucus "doesn't really matter."

"And we had to compete with the Lost premier," volunteer Alex Rosselli '10 said.

"It's hard to get people excited so far in advance," explained Robert Heyman '12. "It's easy to become disengaged in U.S. politics."

Heyman was elected assistant precinct chair at the last caucus, which was heavily attended by Macalester students. As assistant chair, he had the responsibility of running Tuesday night's caucus.

The host drew a few laughs over the course of the night, especially when he asked the nearly empty room if anyone wanted to be an alternate delegate when there were still unfilled delegate slots.

The caucus resulted in gubernatorial hopeful Matt Entenza receiving the most votes of all candidates in the straw poll, with 29 ballots.

A number of resolutions concerning environmental contamination, childhood care and healthcare were passed, and 31 attendees were nominated as delegates to the senate district convention.

The caucus was run almost entirely by Macalester students, who handed out informational flyers, registered voters and collected ballots. Two students were nominated as tellers, or ballot counters, including Mac Dems co-chair Natalie Pavlatos '12.

A member of Macalester's Model UN team and a self-described politics buff, Pavlatos said she has been politically involved since high school.

"At school everyone would come to me with questions about who to vote for," Pavlatos said. "I tried to stay away from the political science major for as long as I could because everyone thought that was what I would do … but I couldn't."

Pavlatos wasn't surprised by the lack of student interest in the caucus.

"For the presidential years the caucus is pretty important, but for the government years it just gauges support," Pavlatos said. "It's really the DFL endorsement that matters."

Continued...

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