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Deval Patrick defeats Reilly on home turf in Democratic Caucus
Democracy was the hottest ticket in town this morning, as a line of Watertown voters waiting to cast ballots in today's Democratic caucus stretched all the way to Main Street. Clipboard-wielding campaign volunteers worked the line and H2otown signed her name so many times it reminded her of closing on her house. "Just pretend you're famous and everybody's asking for your autograph," one campaign volunteer said.
In a big surprise to H2otown, Deval Patrick beat Watertown resident and sitting AG Tom Reilly handily, despite the fact that Reilly's slate of delegates read like a Who's Who of Watertown politics. The net result is that Watertown will send 23 delegates for Deval Patrick to the state's Democratic convention, where a Democratic candidate for the 2006 gubernatorial race will be chosen.
H2otown was also a participant in this process, and she was mildly disappointed that her first experiences of the smoky backrooms of Democratic politics were, in fact so adamantly nonsmoking that someone actually called the Fire Department despite there being no evidence whatsoever of cigars.
Note to Democrats: if your Caucus is so overwhelmingly popular that you pack the room to capacity, don't call the fuzz on yourself -- let the other party do that.
H2otown and Mr. H2otown hung out in the hallway outside the lower hearing room, as H2otown occasionally dipped into the hot and crowded room where the caucus was being conducted. As she stood there, she heard, to her great surprise, Reilly supporters saying, "He's going to get smoked in his own hometown," and another participant of unknown provenance say, "He's contemptuous of Watertown." Yikes! H2otown thought, is Reilly, the overwhelming favorite, actually going to lose? How could this happen?
And yet, it did, as Patrick delegates swept the caucus, sending 23 delegates and an alternate (Hi, Cecilia!) to the State Democratic convention. Wrapping up the caucus, Town Democratic Committee chair Paul Denning said, "I appreciate everyone's participation in this caucus -- there's been a lot of adversity," he noted, to room laughter. "But now you have something to tell your children and grandchildren about the Caucus of 2006."
Just a slight correction to the wording on your story and some additional comments.
The purposes of the State Convention are to determine who achieves the 15% of the delegates required to get on the primary ballot for statewide offices and then endorse candidates for each position. The nominee for the general election will be decided in the Democratic primary in September not at the Convention.
I attended both the 2004 Caucus (as a Tolman supporter and delegate) and last Saturday's Caucus. I saw a lot of new faces. My hope is that this could be the beginning of a real townwide progressive movement in Watertown. There are a lot of us out there, but we only seem to affect townwide policy on a very limited basis. My guess is that many of the new folks are being motivated by the lack of leadership in Washington and at the State House by Republicans and feel there is a real chance to make some changes in November.
Of course, it could just be the impact of effective organizing and the fact that the Reilly folks didn't really do a good job in getting their folks out.
I'm sure the regular Democratic party establishment is now very concerned about the Patrick campaign and will attempt a strategy to try to derail him before the primaries.
Keep up the good work at H20Town.
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