March 10, 2008 08:11 PM UTC

El Paso County Assembly

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• by: Haners

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

I hope this isn’t beating a dead horse here, I know that a lot of people have posted about the assembly already.  I just want to add my two cents-what I thought about it before I read the newspapers.  Also, I want to do this in the same format as the Washington Post does things: by outlining some winner and some losers from the day.

First off, I was surprised on how smoothly the day went.  As some may recall, I expressed concern and predicted that the assembly would get behind schedule because the party was going to make people re-register before they voted in a race.  

The party dodged that bullet though.  It was relatively on schedule, but I never had to re-register for anything.  I’m not sure what that means (did they abandon their rules, etc), but it went well.

As everyone knows, Mark Waller beat Doug Bruce.  Even though I don’t live in HD15 I watch the proceedings.  Waller gave a good speech, and Bruce embarassed himself when he cracked a joke, no one laughed, so he thought his microphone wasn’t working and started his speech over and repeated his joke again.  Someone close to him yelled “[your joke] wasn’t funny the first time!”

Rayburn and Lamborn were there-Rayburn smartly set up a tent in the parking lot that was impossible to miss.  Props to him for thinking outside of the box.  Lamborn did give a good speech and then he kind of disappeared.  Because of that, this isn’t a good comparison statement, but Crank had a crowd of people around him the whole time he was there after he spoke, so that was good for him.

Alright, here’s my “winners” and “losers”.  Agree?  Disagree?  Have at it!

Winners:

The Caucus Process:  Like it or hate it, the Phil Long Expo center was filled with people who were the product of the caucus process-and with a lot of new faces.  The caucus process has certainly been strengthened, and a new generation has the opportunity to be involved and shake things up.

Mark Waller:  Generally unknown and with little preparation time, Mark Waller went to the assembly the under-dog.  He walked away as the front-runner.  Good responses to Bruce’s attacks made him equal to Doug Bruce, and Waller’s first in recent memory assembly win against an incumbent has put Waller on the map.

Phil Long Expo Center:  Putting a slew of really nice cars along the side wall in the center not only was cheap advertising for them as it gave bored assembly attendies a nice distraction.  Have you ever listened to assembly proceedings from the back seat of an Audi convertible?  Neither had I…until yesterday!

Incumbents:  Well, except of course, for Doug Bruce.  But aside from that, incumbents up and down the line won their nominations so easily that many were wondering what the point of an assembly was.  Good news for the party running against a strong headwind this year.

El Paso County Republican Party:  Barely.  I barely put them in this column.  The sound system sucked, the meeting in the middle was too long, Lamborn and Rayburn supporters will be upset because they think the county leadership is unabashedly pro-Crank, and candidates didn’t like paying for tables and signs.  But new faces and a near flawless assembly performance has left most of the complaints in the fringes.  The nay sayers failed to have an event to gain any traction with, so that tips the scales in the county party leaderships’ favor.

Losers:

Doug Bruce:  Say what you want, Mr. Bruce-but you lost the assembly by a large margin.  The momentum is now against Doug Bruce, which leaves him with two choices.  The first is to be quiet and hope people forget about everything.  The second is to go even more negative and risk looking more and more desperate and nasty.  Neither is a choice that an incumbent should have to make.

Expo centers in general:  The sound system in an expo center isn’t designed for quality, as anyone more than three rows away from the podium will tell you.  Everyone else was frustrated.  Phil Long did well for the day, but the next assembly needs to be held some place designed to communicate to three thousand people.  World Arena in 2010, anyone?

The Gazette:  While their front page article was good, their reporting was seriously lacking.  There were so many things they could have covered and they didn’t.  Add to that misspelling candidate’s names and incorrectly listing Shelia Hicks as an incumbent, and anyone attending should be disappointed in the Gazette.

John McCain:  The biggest applause I heard all day was when Wayne Williams (speaking for John McCain) mentioned that he was a county co-chair for Mitt Romney.  That says a lot about the problems John McCain is having with the run-of-the-mill Republican base.