In this week’s column, written solo, LaVarr talks about the caucus system in Utah and its affect on politics in the State. LaVarr explains:

Utah’s nominating process gives a great deal of power to political activists, in particular those who will attend the roughly 1,500 party precinct caucuses in neighborhoods across the state on March 23. Attendees will elect around 3,500 delegates to attend the May 8 state convention, and many more to county conventions.

Those state delegates are all-important, because they determine the fate of the gubernatorial candidates. They will vote to keep one or two candidates going and will dump the rest. If one candidate gets 60 percent or more of the convention vote, that person becomes the party’s nominee. Otherwise, the top two vote-getters square off in a June primary election.

So the first goal of Marty Stephens, Fred Lampropoulos, Gary Herbert, Nolan Karras, Jim Hansen and Jon Huntsman is to get delegates elected at the March 23 caucuses who are supportive of them, or at least persuadable, so they can win enough votes to emerge from the convention.

From deseretnews.com | Race goes to who has ‘stacked’ caucus
Referenced Sun Nov 30 2003 21:16:07 GMT-0700

I decided long ago that it was more important to be one of the people deciding what the choices will be than to actually make the choice. In Utah that means being a delegate and going to caucus meetings and, ultimately, the convention. One of the reasons that politics in Utah can get so dogmatic is because its the people with fire in their bellies who make the effort to go to the caucus meetings and elect delegates who will eventually decide who the nominees are. Let’s face it, 9 times out of 10 in Utah once the Republican candidate has been selected, the race is over. Consequently, most candidates work hard to “stack” the caucus:

It all comes down to who has the votes, who has “stacked” the caucus, who can overpower the other campaigns.

This is all incredibly difficult. Most campaigns communicate reasonably well with past delegates and hold a lot of meetings with them. Some campaigns communicate well with the broader universe of previous caucus attendees.

But rare is the campaign that really organizes effectively at the precinct level. Few campaigns recruit very many precinct captains. Not many captains are effective in running a mini-campaign in their precincts, not many recruit new caucus attendees or have a strategy going into the caucus.

From deseretnews.com | Race goes to who has ‘stacked’ caucus
Referenced Sun Nov 30 2003 21:21:14 GMT-0700

As LaVarr says, its difficult, still its something candidates work hard at. I think there’s much more they could do from a technology sense, to make it easier. But, I think the most amazing thing is that most Utahns are perfectly happy to go to the polls each November, ignorant of the real force that selected the candidates they see before them: the caucus system.