Caucusing Cardinals

On March 5, hundreds of Douglas County residents filled the EHS gymnasium to support the Democratic nominees at the Democratic Caucus.

A caucus is defined as a meeting of the members of a legislative body who are members of a particular political party, to select candidates or decide policy. In the case of this particular caucus, local Democrats came together to pick Kansas’ Democratic nominee for President.

Kansas is divided up into 40 districts, which determine the locations of the voting polls. Eudora is a part of Kansas Senate District #3. For the caucus, the state party chooses a chairman to organize volunteers and look over things during the event. Austin Harris was elected as chairman. Harris previously ran for the District 42 seat in the Kansas House of Representatives and is the vice chairman of the Leavenworth Democratic Party.

During the caucus, voters went through registration to either vote and/or change their party affiliation.

“As expected, the caucus was chaotic,” said Bryanna Longacre, Sr., who attended the caucus, “Not the crazy, disorganized kind of chaotic, but rather the exciting, buzzing kind of environment. Everyone there was hyped to be seated in a sweaty gym for three hours just to show support for their favorite candidate. There are few people who would consider that a well-spent Saturday afternoon, but I was one of them.”

For other caucus-goers, the energy was the biggest surprise.

“The environment was a lot more energetic than I had anticipated,” said Jack Reynolds, Sr., “It reminded me of a sporting event. There was a lot of cheering and everyone did the wave at one point.”

Although this caucus was a local focus for the upcoming election, it was also an important moment for our high school. Things like this caucus do not come around very often. Regardless of your political position, this is something that our school can be very proud of.