The Silent Majority Ruled the Night

I was thrilled to have the opportunity tonight to serve as a Scott County precinct captain for Governor Romney. I was assigned to the Davenport City-41 precinct. We caucused in the auditorium of West High School (Davenport). It was a large school and a large auditorium -- there were six Republican precincts caucusing in the same auditorium.

The Thompson campaign was the only other to provide a precinct captain.

As I rallied my Romney supporters, and checked names from my list I recognized the Thompson campaign was grabbing nearly as many as I was. I felt good about this. The Thompson folks are a lot like Romney folks in their conservativeness, but they have an extra touch of laid-back folksy.

As we had the Romney and Thompson folks decorated in our colors, a small minority asked me if they knew where they could get a Huckabee sticker/placard/literature/sign. There were none to be found. I did not see Mr. Huckabee's name anywhere the entire night (until we started counting ballots). No signs in front of the school, no captains to rally the troops. It would be safe to say they did not have a single staffer or volunteer at this large six-precinct gathering of caucus-goers at West High School.

When it was time to speak on behalf of the candidates, I moved first to endorse Governor Romney. I thanked the audience for their participation in the process and remarked about our wonderful system in America that we can gather in a peaceful forum, discuss our candidates, make a selection, and then go back to being friends and neighbors. After speaking on Governor Romney's key issue positions I suggested that only Mitt Romney had orchestrated the kind of fundraising and campaign that could compete with the one the Republicans will be certain to face in November, as Senators Clinton and Obama have demonstrated a lot of success in this area.

The precinct captain for Senator Thompson followed me. There was also a speaker for Duncan Hunter. The McCain camp had an out-of-state college student trying to man all six precincts in the auditorium. He was passionate, but a bit angry and did a poor job of relating to the audience (median age ~50) as he yelled about McCain being right and Bush being wrong. The Huckabee, Giuliani, and Paul camps did not have a spokesperson.

Final Tally, Precinct: Davenport City-41: 1. Mike Huckabee (23, 36.5%); 2. Mitt Romney (13, 20.6%); 3. Fred Thompson (11, 17.5%); 3. John McCain (11, 17.5%); 5. Ron Paul (4, 6.3%); 6. Duncan Hunter (1, 1.6%), 7. Rudy Giuliani (0, 0%)

I could not believe it. There was not a single Huckabee staffer, volunteer, or precinct captain on hand. There was not one person in our precinct willing to speak up on his behalf. Yet, as I counted the ballots with the Thompson Team, paper after paper we were amazed to see Huckabee win the support of over a third of the crowd. Many of these were first-time caucus-goers who registered to vote on site. They weren't registered beforehand, weren't willing to speak up for their guy, but showed up to cast their vote -- the silent supporters of Governor Mike Huckabee.