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So, how totally unprepared were Boss Esser and his boys on caucus straw poll day?

My friends in the traditional media tell me that initially, the WSRP told them that they wouldn’t have caucus results until sometime in mid March, to which the press corps collectively responded… “What the fuck?” (Though not exactly in those words; we all know that real reporters never swear.) Then, when the state Dems announced that they would report results same-day, the R’s relented and said that they would report by the end of the day too. Only they couldn’t. So apparently, they made the whole damn thing up.

They made the whole damn thing up.

Esser understood that his data was garbage — that’s why they initially weren’t going to report results until March — and yet to keep pace with the Dems he reported “results” anyway, eventually declaring McCain the winner, with 14% of who-knows-what left uncounted… and just in time to change the narrative in the Sunday morning headlines. Esser lied to reporters.

“Republicans went through extensive training on how to run a caucus, deal with issues, be scrupulous in observance of the rules, and report results. Discipline has always been our strong suit.”

– The Crackpiper, 2/9/08 5:00 PM

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Calling all Sammamish-area Republicans: Did your ex-state senator and current gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi participate in your fantastically run caucuses last weekend? Did he even bother? (Since Goldy mentions that no caucus actually took place, maybe it doesn’t matter, but it’s worth asking.)

So I ask you, did you caucus with Dino Rossi?

On a slightly different note: I ran my precinct’s caucus on Saturday, and I thought I did a not-so-great job… That is, until I started reading all about the totally craptastic job you GOP guys did on Saturday. From one ill-prepared party activist to another, I salute you.

After reading the rules, reviewing the documents and analyzing the data, I am now prepared to categorically state that Sen. John McCain most certainly did not win the Washington state Republican caucus… because there was no Republican caucus, at least not as most people understand the term.

What transpired Saturday afternoon was in fact a straw poll, followed by a delegate selection process that had no direct relationship to presidential preference. Caucus attendees were asked to register at their precinct table, using a form that asks for, but does not specifically require stating one’s presidential preference.

Unlike the Democratic caucus there is no counting and reporting of presidential preference, and no allocation of delegates proportionate to the stated preference of the attendees. There is no time alloted in the agenda for caucus goers to speak on behalf of the presidential candidates, and no opportunity to go back and change one’s preference. After selecting a secretary (and a chairman if no PCO is present) the attendees proceed to nominate and elect delegates and alternates. Nominees are given “a reasonable period of time” to speak on their own behalf, and are required to indicate presidential preference, but there is no requirement that the indicated preference is the same as that stated on the registration form.

Afterwards the caucus officers are required to submit back to the county party a Caucus Report that includes the names and addresses of the elected delegates and alternates, but note that the official form provides no line for reporting the presidential preference of the delegates.

So, on Saturday night, when WSRP Chair Luke Esser disrupted the emerging media narrative of a potential three-state Huckabee sweep, by officially congratulating McCain for “a hard-fought win,” what is it exactly that McCain supposedly won? The delegate count? Hardly, for not only are the delegates not bound to a specific candidate, they weren’t even elected based on presidential preference. (If they were, you’d think they might have included a line for that on the form.) Furthermore, because the state party rules permit county organizations to allocate any number of delegates, as long as they are at least twice the number of precincts, and uniformly apportioned within the county, a precinct delegate from one county might represent a vastly different number of voters (or caucus goers) than a precinct delegate from another, and thus might play a vastly greater or smaller role in ultimately selecting a delegate to the national convention. A statewide precinct delegate count would therefore be an entirely meaningless metric of presidential preference, even assuming it represents presidential preference at all. Which it doesn’t.

To declare McCain the winner of the WA GOP caucus — as Esser has repeatedly done over the past several days — is to imply that he won the most votes, or would ultimately win the most state delegates based on the precinct caucus results, but the raw precinct delegate count as reported by the WSRP directly corresponds to neither. Esser could have reported the results of the straw poll, which would at least have reflected the preference of the caucus attendees. Instead he chose to mislead the media and the public by presenting delegate totals as something they are not.

And in fact, even if precinct delegates were comparable from county to county (and they’re not) and do represent a binding presidential preference (and they don’t,) the results released by the WSRP and a smattering of county organizations would strongly suggest that both Huckabee and Paul would earn more national delegates from the caucus process than the putative winner. McCain won big in King County, but apparently lost almost everywhere else in the state. That would give McCain national delegates from maybe two congressional districts while Huckabee and Paul split the remaining seven.

Of course, I don’t need to explain any of this to Boss Esser — he understood the process better than anybody, and knew that if the precinct delegate totals weren’t totally meaningless they at best predicted the opposite of his Saturday night pronouncement. But the Huckabee “sweep” narrative had to be crushed, and Esser was more than willing to do it. Huckabee’s lawyers can recount all they want; the damage has already been done.

The General thinks the WSRP’s website is boring, so he’s emailed Boss Esser suggesting a snazzy new redesign:

Damn.

Rep. Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in Congress, died early Monday after a six-week fight with cancer, his spokeswoman said.

Spokeswoman Lynne Weil said this morning that the 80-year-old Lantos died at Bethesda Naval Medical Center in suburban Maryland. He was surrounded by his wife Annette Lantos, daughters Annette and Katrina, and many of his 18 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

His wife said in a statement that her husband’s life was “defined by courage, optimism, and unwavering dedication to his principles and to his family.”

They sure don’t make enough Representatives like him.

Since becoming chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs a year ago, he has advocated tirelessly for human rights in China, Russia, Burma and Darfur. Late last year, he assailed Yahoo executives for handing over the identity of a Chinese activist, telling them in not quite politically correct fashion: “Morally, you are pygmies.”

Since prematurely calling Washington’s caucus for John McCain, thus changing the narrative of Saturday’s results, WSRP Chair Luke Esser is making a name for himself nationwide… or rather, the nation is making up new names for him. Over on TPM, Josh Marshall has taken to calling him “Boss Esser“ in their expanding coverage of the caucus counting debacle, while BradBlog has endearingly termed him “Esser the Suppressor“. Cute, but to us here at HA, we’ll always lovingly know Esser simply as Rob McKenna’s bitch.

As anyone who has followed his storybook career knows, Esser has benefited from a long and cozy relationship with WA State Attorney General Rob McKenna, the two having worked closely together to climb the political ladder. Esser joined then King County Councilmember McKenna’s staff in 1996, and stayed on as a top aide even after Esser was elected first to the state house and then the state senate. Esser was paid for his help on McKenna’s successful 2004 campaign for Attorney General, and was rewarded with a plum assignment as “Outreach Director”, the perfect position in the AG’s office for a lawyer with very little legal experience. Then, after Esser lost his senate reelection bid in 2006, McKenna used his pull as the highest elected Republican in the state to help oust then WSRP Chair Diane Tebelius and replace her with his pal Esser, who proceeded to do political work on the public’s dime, while initially drawing pay checks from both the AGO and the state party. On resigning from the AG’s office under public pressure, Esser took pains to detail his close affection and ties to McKenna, writing in his resignation letter: “… Rest assured that I will always be available if I can ever be helpful to you.”

Well… considering Attorney General Rob McKenna is also Sen. John McCain’s Washington state campaign chair, it looks like Esser was awfully damn helpful to his patron Saturday night.

I’m just sayin’.

On Friday, the day before the caucuses here, former Mike McGavick staffer Timothy Goddard gave this as one of the reasons why the Republican base should STFU and just support McCain:

Point two–A McCain loss will embarass the Washington State Republican Party

Particularly when McCain coasts to an easy victory in the primary on the 19th. It will demonstrate that the local party activists and caucus-goers are woefully out of touch with the Washington State Republicans who actually supply the votes. Remember those? They’re important. Now, it may be true that we activists are out of touch, and if it is, we need to figure out how we can rectify that situation. But personally, I’d rather it were not pointed out in such blatant fashion.

Because of the timing of our caucus and primary, and that of recent political events, we’re a party uniquely positioned to embarrass itself. That’s one opportunity I sincerely hope to avoid taking. Our party needs to gain influence over the voters of this state, both friendly and otherwise, and caucusing for Huckabee will diminish it, instead.

I went to a Democratic caucus on Saturday. It was chaotic and even frustrating at times, but one thing that I can’t complain about was whether or not it was democratic (in the small ‘d’ sense). It most certainly was. The initial presidential preferences were tallied, the amount of delegates chosen were based strictly upon the amount of support there was for each candidate. As I slowly heard what had been happening at the Republican caucuses, I noticed that things weren’t happening the same way. I think Timothy Killian is correct in his explanation here:

The rules of the Washington State Republican Party Caucus states that “there is no formal system applied in the Precinct Caucuses to relate the presidential preference of the Caucus participants to the choice of the precinct’s delegates.” In other words, unlike most other caucuses wherein delegates are tied in some formal way to the preferences of caucus attendees, each individual precinct was free to determine their delegate in any manner they chose. (See here).

As a result, a given precincts presidential preferences could break out this way:

Huckabee: 10
McCain: 8
Paul: 3
But, their delegates, which are unrelated to the above preferences, could break out this way:

Huckabee: 1
McCain: 2
Paul: 1

Pudge’s post at Sound Politics that Goldy references below seems to confirm this. Unlike the Democratic caucuses where the delegates were apportioned by support, at the Republican caucuses (from the link above):

There is no formal system applied in the Precinct Caucuses to relate the presidential preference of the Caucus participants to the choice of the precinct’s delegates. The participants at each Precinct Caucus alone determine if presidential preference is to be a factor in such choice and, if so, how it is to be applied.

In other words, the mathematical formula that Democrats used to determine delegate apportionment doesn’t seem to exist on the Republican side. If you look at the overall results, it looks like most of the Republican caucuses sent delegates who more-or-less represented the voters of their precinct, but there are definitely more than a few cases where Republican caucusers are claiming that they were “shut out” of the process:

Kim Davis, for example, said she felt like proper procedures weren’t followed at her precinct.

Davis, 47, a Huckabee supporter, said caucus-goers at her table were not given the opportunity to make the case for their candidate nor to vote on who among them would get to be delegates.

“Several McCain supporters just decided for the table and filled out the form,” she said. “I got bamboozled.”

The social conservatives in the Republican Party have long been bamboozled by the corporate bigwigs who actually run it, but it’s interesting to watch the bamboozlement happen at the grass roots level.

I’m definitely arriving at the same conclusion as Killian:

In summation, it may very well be that Huckabee won Washington State. Or maybe McCain won. At this point, we have no way of knowing. What we do know is this: Luke Esser is willfully mispresenting the results of the Washington State Republican Caucuses.

The entire media world has now reported that John McCain was the winner in Washington, but that result is not based on the actual results of the caucus preferences.

I invite the media to more closely scrutinize this.

I second that.

UPDATE: From commenter ‘rhp6033’ in the thread below (and I apologize for sending Christmasghost towards another mental breakdown there…), King5’s Robert Mak is looking into irregularities in the Snohomish County vote:

One Snohomish County caucus chairman told KING 5 that the delegate preferences are “dramatically different” than the attendee counts.

The Snohomish County Republican Party does not have the delegate preferences from many of its caucuses and is working to obtain them.

What with Washington State Republican Party Chair Luke Esser making boneheaded comments to reporters that he’s going to try to get as “close as we can to 100 percent” in the vote count, he doesn’t need much help making himself the butt of national jokes, but… well… we here at HA are always happy to lend a hand.

Over the last few years we’ve collected a treasure trove of Esserteria to amuse our friends and enrage our enemies, some of which is already gracing the pages of the widely read TPM Muckraker:

Esser wrote in the University of Washington’s paper that he was praying for rain, because that would drive Democratic-voting “shiftless deadbeats” away from the polls. He explained, “Years of interminable welfare checks and free government services have made these modern-day sloths even more lazy. They will vote on election day, if it isn’t much of a bother. But even the slightest inconvenience can keep them from the polling place.”

In this 1980’s era column Esser bemoaned the loss of “successful anti-deadbeat voter techniques (poll taxes, sound beatings, etc.)” while wistfully recalling the days of Nixonian tricksterism:

We all remember those great political traditions — whistle-stop tours, kissing babies, voter fraud, dirty tricks, and voting a straight Republican ticket. […] Like any sport worth its salt, in politics you have adversaries, opponents, enemies. Our enemies are loudmouth leftists and shiftless deadbeats. To win the election, we have to keep as many of these people away from the polls as possible.

Yeah sure, Esser was attempting to be funny, but many a truth is said in jest, and the column displays a degree of ruthless mean-spiritedness that has reared its head throughout his political career. You know, like the misleading TV ad Esser apparently commissioned, attacking Gov. Gregoire for of all things, Washington’s presidential caucus! “Gov. Gregoire and her party don’t want you voting on Feb. 5!” the storyboard proclaims, “What are Gregoire and the Democrats so afraid of?”

Um… A) Gregoire had absolutely nothing to do with the 178 members of the WSDCC choosing to allocate delegates via caucus rather than primary; and B) What is Esser so afraid of that he had to halt the counting if his party’s own messy caucus so that he could unilaterally declare McCain the winner just in time to make the Sunday morning headlines?

Why do I assume Esser showed favoritism toward McCain? Well you certainly wouldn’t expect a push for Mitt Romney from the guy who once disparaged the B.Y.U. football team as “those polygamists.” And it’s not so out of character to expect a touch of ethical flexibility from a double dipper who saw nothing wrong with collecting paychecks from the WSRP and the Office of the Attorney General at the same time.

And of course, no Luke Esser tribute would be complete without a reread of my classic essay, “Luke Esser Fucks Pigs“, a post Dan Savage lauded as “the funniest thing Goldy’s ever done.” (And unlike Esser’s college try at humor, my satire was not only funny, it actually attempted to make a point.)

I must admit to taking more than a bit of pleasure from the charges of irregularities in Washington’s Republican presidential caucus… and our local GOPologists muddled efforts to defend their party’s honor.

I cut my nasty, sharp blogger teeth covering the 2004 gubernatorial election contest, and while I wouldn’t mind sinking them into the pasty white necks of my friends over at (u)SP, they seem to be doing a pretty good job rending their own flesh all by their lonesome. First Eric expresses dismay over the tone of Mike Huckabee’s campaign, and his “scorched earth policy of throwing bare-knuckle punches at a state party and a state party chair.” (Heaven forfend!) And now Pudge dismisses the whole hoohah, arguing that the caucuses were so chaotic and mismanaged that the result “literally means nothing at all.” (Gee, didn’t I read something like that somewhere before?)

Well of course Mike Huckabee (and I’m guessin’ the apostles of Ron Paul) suspect error and/or fraud in Saturday’s caucus… such suspicions are part of the Republican Party’s DNA. Hell, Pudge’s own description of the process is far from reassuring; if this had been a general election in which officials simply called the race for the Democrat with 13% of ballots left uncounted, you can bet dollars to donuts that both he and Eric would be crying foul at the evil Democratic machine. But this wasn’t a general election, it was a caucus, and as such, perception is at least as meaningful as the ultimate delegate allocation. Luke Esser called the election for McCain on Saturday night because that was the headline McCain needed in the papers Sunday morning. Even Pudge understands this, though he clearly fails to understand (or admit) it’s meaning…

This is clear if you understand the process. The results were released just so that the party could make some news. They have no meaning.

Because… um… in politics, making news has no meaning. Uh-huh.

Back in 2004, when talk radio was calling for a revote and the EFF’s Bob Williams was repeatedly demanding that Dean Logan be jailed, I argued that errors occur in every election, and that the error rate in that one was well within the statistical boundaries described in the scholarly literature… an argument to which Stefan responded by accusing me of aiding and abetting a criminal cover up. So forgive my amusement at the sight of Republicans eating their own with accusations of election fraud. And forgive Huckabee for being so suspicious of a Washington state Republican establishment that has proven itself so cavalier and nakedly partisan on issues of election integrity.

Obama wins Maine. And once again his victory appears to be both broad and deep. That’s four for four, heading into Tuesday’s Potomac Primary.

UPDATE:
With 99% of precincts reporting, Obama wins 59.5% to 40.5%. First contest of the weekend in which Clinton came within 20 points, so I guess she’s got the momentum, huh?

As has been widely reported, people are beginning to question the results from yesterday’s Washington state Republican caucus, which WSRP Chair Luke Esser officially called in favor of John McCain by the narrowest of margins. And with official returns remaining frozen at 87.5% of precincts reporting, no wonder conspiracy theories are starting to flourish.

Unlike the Democrats, the WSRP has failed to post county-by-county numbers, and likewise, few county GOP organizations have publicly reported results. But while this frustrates efforts at more in depth analysis, it does raise some questions about the relevance of the numbers already reported.

For example, while statewide results show McCain with a slight lead, results posted in both Cowlitz, Clark and Franklin counties show the putative front runner getting his ass kicked, coming in fourth behind Huckabee, Romney and Paul in various orders, while incomplete results from Pierce County shows a very close race. So where did McCain garner his lead?

The WSRP website only reports percentages, but FOX News reports precinct delegate totals (from where they get their data, hell if I know,) showing McCain with a mere 242 delegate lead over Huckabee, 3,468 to 3,226. Quite clearly, McCain owes his apparent victory to King County, where he relatively thumped Huckabee 1,321 to 798, for a 523 delegate advantage.

Okay… it’s not so unusual for population dense King County to sway a statewide election, but hidden in these numbers is a question nobody else seems to have asked: is a precinct delegate from King County equivalent to a precinct delegate from Cowlitz county in terms of the number of voters they represent, and the influence they have on the final, state delegate allocation? And the answer, apparently, is “No.”

Accord to Rule 2 of the WSRP’s Caucus and Convention Rules:

Each county shall determine for its convention the minimum number of potential delegates provided that each county shall allocate among the precincts a number of potential delegates to be elected which is at least two (2) times the number of precincts in its county. Automatic delegates under Rule 14 shall be in addition to the number of delegates allowed for election under this rule.

What that means is that each county organization is free to allocate as many potential delegates to their county convention as they want, as long as that number is at least twice the number of precincts. This makes the statewide precinct delegate count as reported by the WSRP virtually meaningless, as the relative value of a precinct delegate is simply not comparable from county to county.

One thing we can discern from the numbers though is that Republican turnout does not appear to have been as universally robust as party officials have claimed. So far, the only county party I’ve found to have published their potential delegate allocation was Thurston County, with a potential 624 county convention delegates (not including automatic delegates) apportioned amongst their 299 precincts; how many of these were actually allocated yesterday, we don’t yet know. But in King County we do know that only 4195 delegates were allocated amongst its 2,555 precincts, 915 fewer than the absolute minimum number of potential delegates that would have been made available under party rules. Likewise, Franklin County allocated only 118 delegates amongst its 93 precincts, leaving at a bare minimum, 36% of potential delegates unallocated.

How does this happen? A KCGOP insider explained that at some precincts, no one showed up, while at others, not enough people showed up to fill all the delegate slots; it’s “not unusual at all” he told me. Almost a thousand delegates at least went unallocated for want of caucus goers in King and Franklin counties alone, and possibly many, many more than that — we can’t know for sure until we know the actual number of potential delegates available. That’s not exactly consistent with claims of high voter turnout.

Or maybe, turnout was as heavy as party officials claim, in which case King County might be the first place Huckabee’s lawyers might want to look for missing delegates?

UPDATE:
Chelan County allocated 170 delegates yesterday, exactly double the number of their 85 precincts. FYI, Huckabee beat McCain 25% to 22%.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
The WSRP just updated their results page. McCain leads Huckabee 25.4% to 23.8% with 93.3% of precincts reporting. Or so they say.

UPDATE [Lee]: This Sound Politics public blog post from Friday by Mike McGavick’s former New Media Director, Tim Goddard, gives some insight into the mindset of GOP insiders here over the fact that McCain has so little support from the Republican base. After reading his “Point One” and “Point Two”, it should be abundantly clear why Mike Huckabee is suspicious over what happened yesterday.

It looks like Sen. John McCain, the GOP’s nominee apparent, has managed to squeak out a narrow victory in Washington state’s Republican caucus… but there’s not much for McCain to cheer about in the numbers:

Huckabee	23.7 %
McCain	25.5 %
Paul	20.6 %
Romney	16.5 %
Other	1.1 %
Uncommitted	12.7 %
(87.2% of precincts reporting.)

You’d think just days after McCain’s Super Duper Tuesday victories, the GOP’s putative nominee might be able to secure a tad more than a quarter of the vote in what is, let’s face it, not exactly hillbilly territory, yet he barely even managed to edge out rapture-ready Mike Huckabee. But that’s not the worst of it. 16.5% of WA Republicans caucused for Mitt Romney despite having dropped out of the race, while 21% went for Ron Paul despite, well, him being Ron Paul. And 12.7% of Republican caucus goers — some of the party’s most dedicated and active members — proved so disaffected that they pledged “uncommitted”. Way to rally around your nominee folks.

I know national polls have consistently shown McCain to be the GOP’s most viable candidate, but it’s hard to imagine a Republican victory in November without an enthusiastic base. And with a few points of turnout differential enough to make the difference in close races, down-ticket Republicans should be feeling awfully nervous right about now. (Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you Dave Reichert.)

Even in the Republican caucus it looks like Democrats came out the winner.

The thought popped in to my head as I walked home from a post-caucus meal Pike Place Market with my friend and fellow blogger Carl Ballard…

We heard about the folks who were so depressed over Bush’s victory in ’04, that they threatened to move to Canada. Liberal folks. It got me thinking…

Where will the Republicans go? Will they run away to Brazil or Argentina, like the Nazis did? I can’t think of a country that does for disaffected Republicans what Canada does for depressed Democrats.

Is there a right-wind junta that will shelter them? A fascist father-figure to idolize, much as William F. Buckley idolized Spanish dictator Francisco Franco? Have they no place to call their own when Barack Obama (or HRC) put their hand on the Bible January 20th, 2009?

I’m stumped.