Neighbors make the process work
I learned a little about my neighborhood this weekend. I learned that many of my neighbors will trudge a half-mile to a junior high school to stand in line to support a presidential candidate. They seem to take their role in the political process seriously, at least seriously enough to descend in droves on Walter Johnson Middle School near the northwest corner of Alta and Buffalo Drives. They have some fun with the archaic and confusing caucus operation. Many joked about waiting in line to be told their actual precinct number; one woman who brought her two young daughters with her compared it to, “Disneyland without the rides.” Another white-haired woman, volunteering for the Clinton campaign, helped herd the turtles while wearing a blue Hillary sweatshirt, blue sweat pants, bright red sneakers and a blue baseball cap decorated with red-sequined pipe cleaners.
Who are these people? They are us. I drive the streets of my neighborhood every day and, until yesterday, knew hardly anything about the people who inhabit the nearly 30-year-old homes around our own single-story, corner dwelling. There are a few owners of yappy dogs. They hold a lot of yard sales and I imagine they are selling the same unwanted stuff to each other. A lot of them drive pickups. The guy down the street works for NDOT; his rig is always parked around the corner from our house. But there are many union members near our home; many of the caucusers wore Teamster and SEIU jackets. A lot of families visited the Johnson Middle School gym (home of the Eagles), as kids roamed around the basketball court handing out Obama and Clinton stickers.
On the cusp of Summerlin, we live in a fairly middle-class neighborhood. A total of 125 residents turned up to caucus, spending a couple of hours making their voices heard (well, 101 made their voices heard – we lost 24 voters who seeped away before the final count was recorded). The event was frequently loud and chaotic, as Clinton and Obama supporters chanted over the lonely voices of precinct captains attempting to speak to their contingents. Even arriving at an accurate head count was a lengthy and clumsy process (it took our precinct volunteers four attempts just to figure out how many of us there were).
Finally, after the non-viable Edwards contingent was dispersed and our single “undecided” voter was coerced to the Obama camp, my precinct (3360) went for Clinton over Obama 66-35. As I mentioned to a woman with me in the Obama line, our neighborhood should hold monthly caucuses just to keep in touch -- caucus for the main dishes at the next neighborhood potluck or something. It would also help smooth out the rough spots in our next presidential caucus.
As I waited in line, I shared a text message with a few of the people around me. It was from a friend in Northern California, who wanted to know if I was voting at a casino. “Yeah!” I wrote back. “In fact, I just pulled someone off a craps table to caucus for Obama.” If he only knew.
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It wasn’t all civic responsibility Saturday, as I took in the VIP concert to usher in the new Palazzo, the Venetian’s sister hotel across from Wynn Las Vegas on Sands Avenue on the Strip. The event was actually held at a fairly chilly Venetian ballroom, with Wayne Brady, Andy Garcia and his band of Cuban artists, the great cast of the upcoming Palazzo production of “Jersey Boys,” Seal and Diana Ross taking turns onstage. Ross, dressed in a rhinestone-encrusted black gown and her wildly teased-out hair looking like big black sagebrush, closed the show with a medley of her hits from the Supremes and solo career. Her performance was mostly superstar karaoke, as she sang to recorded music with no backing musicians (and, oddly, her performance was not simulcast on the two giant screens on either side of the stage; a promotional shot of her looking 29 years old was instead beamed to the crowd). But the roaring audience loved Miss Ross, even as it seemed her set was cut a bit short. As Ross belted out “I Will Survive,” she called out, “One more time!” as the curtain drew closed. “Oh, I guess that’s it,” she said as she vanished inside the giant drapes. Buh-bye!
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PL8 in my head: SZEMTRS on a Toyota Camry. Good plate for a Hummer, maybe ...
Fabulous Las Vegas appears at this Web site. John Katsilometes, who also hosts Our Metropolis, a weekly issues and affairs show, each Tuesday at 6 p.m. on KUNV 91.5-FM, can be reached at 990-7720, 812-9812 or at [email protected].