No one had ever seen anything like it. From Denver to Pueblo to the San Miguel Courthouse, record numbers of voters crammed into caucus locations last night, jamming school gyms, filling living rooms, taking every seat at the Telluride Fire Station to pick their presidential candidates.
Democrats in Colorado and San Miguel County handed a big win to Sen. Barack Obama. He won handily across the state, and here in San Miguel County, he walked away with 86 percent of the record-setting vote.
On the Republican side, early returns showed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney leading Colorado. In San Miguel County, Romney and Sen. John McCain split the local Republican vote, getting 30 votes each.
It was a historic caucus for San Miguel County.
Throngs of voters filling the courthouse and Norwood community center, St. Patrick’s church and the Mountain Village Town Hall. In Precinct 2, Democratic organizers even moved the caucuses at the last minute, from the Miramonte Building to the fire station. Organizers ran out of signup sheets.
In the county, 387 Democrats voted last night, compared with 48 during the last caucuses. That translates to a 700 percent increase in voter turnout.
“It’s pretty astonishing,” said Dick Unruh, the county Democratic chairman. “It looks like it’s the Obama factor, doesn’t it?”
The local Republican Party, so diminutive that in 2006 they couldn’t even find a candidate to run for county commissioner, even saw a high turnout. The caucuses in Telluride drew 33 voters; a total of 90 turned out across the county.
“It’s a wonderful turnout,” said Harley Brooke-Hitching, the county chairwoman. “And it’s wonderful to be in a room with so many Republicans, where you don’t have to whisper.”
It was the same story across the state. On the Front Range, people crushed into high-school auditoriums and gyms, causing localized traffic jams, according to news reports. They ran out of registration cards in Lafayette. The parking lots outside Parachute caucuses overflowed.
Both Democrats and Republicans turned out like never before, but it was Democrats who truly flooded the caucuses. Aurora caucuses once attended by 100 people drew 1,000 last night, according to news reports.
In San Miguel County, nearly every Democrat in these teeming crowds showed up to vote for Obama. He received 333 votes, and Clinton got only 52. Based on yesterday’s caucuses, Obama gets 46 delegates for the county caucus, and Clinton takes three.
Eileen McGinley, who attended the Precinct 1 caucus, said that Obama inspired hope, that he was energizing the country’s young voters, and that he’d been a consistent voice of dissent on the Iraq war. She cast her lot with Obama last night.
“This is going to be your world, and he can be a good leader for you,” she told the crowds.
But not everyone was convinced. Ron Gilmer, a Clinton supporter, said the New York senator has been a strong supporter of gay rights while Obama has been vague on the issue.
“I’m just a little leery of him,” he said.
For months, Obama has held a clear edge in San Miguel County. His messages of changing the political landscape and his consistent opposition to the war in Iraq electrified many voters in this pacifist, iconoclastic corner of the West.
Obama’s campaign raked in $40,000 from donors in the 81435 area code, which encompasses Telluride, Mountain Village and the eastern reaches of the county. That total was 20 times more than any other candidate, Democrat or Republican, took in from local donors.
Telluride-area donors have given some $2,000 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and $1,000 each to Mitt Romney and John McCain.
Two weeks ago, Obama’s campaign even opened an office on Colorado Avenue, the first time any presidential candidate had established a main-street storefront.
Volunteers hung posters and handed out buttons and signs. They sponsored parties and caucus information sessions.
In the midst of all this Obamania, the other campaigns barely made a peep here.
And if last night’s rout is any indication, that attention paid off in Telluride.
“It’s pretty much like when I voted for John F. Kennedy,” said Warner Paige. “I think a lot of people are caught up in Barack Obama ... We’re all caught up in this movement.”