Barack Obama won the Iowa Caucuses tonight by a significant margin boosted by strong support from registered Independents and first time caucusgoers. However, the most striking example of this was in Eldridge, Iowa. The Obama precinct captain there was 2006 Independent Congressional candidate James Hill. Hill ran with his party affiliation as Pirate and garnered 2201 votes. This exemplifies the lead shown by Obama among self described Independents. Unfortunately though, none of the polls asked prospective caucusgoers if they self-identified as pirates.
January 3rd, 2008
One week from today, Grinnell will host a satellite voting station for the primaries. Any Poweshiek county resident may come to the Forum South Lounge (between 9AM and 4PM) to vote, register, and change party affiliation, all in one place.
Here’s what’s going on between now and then:
- Ed Fallon will be on campus on Saturday for lunch (and, presumably, some talking) with students. The event will have free food from the Back Alley Deli. The Students for Fallon group has done a good job publicizing it, so I expect it’ll be well attended.
- Mike Blouin will be on campus Sunday evening at 7PM in Loose Lounge. We think Andy McGuire will also be there. He’ll be tailoring his speech to Grinnell students, so it should be more worthwhile than the average Iowa stump speech. He and Dr. McGuire will also take some questions.
- IowaProgress will feature interviews with staffers from the Fallon and Blouin campaigns about Iowa politics, the role of students and of the internet, and other subjects this week. Culver’s campaign never responded to our emails about the interview (or about anything at all, actually).
- Campus Democrats will meet at 7:30PM on Tuesday to discuss our “big push” for voters on Friday. We’ll be organizing publicity stuff and also poll-watching.
- Our new Podcast will debut with coverage of the events on campus this weekend and of other interesting political news. It’ll be the first progressive political podcast in the state’s history (as far as we know), so it should be exciting. We’re still lining up stories and guests for this week (and for future weeks), so if you have any ideas or if you think we should interview you or someone you work for, comment on this post or email us.
Man, Iowa politics are so hot right now.
And, if you’re wondering how we organized the satellite voting station (more than one person has emailed us to ask), it’s simple: contact your county auditor and ask them what to do. They may tell you that you need to get some signatures on a petition, or they may just tell you to find a location and they’ll be there.
Also, a guy on NPR just called corn “the plant that ate America.”
April 21st, 2006
