Thursday, November 24, 2016, I attended the Kitsap County Democratic Party year end membership meeting.  I got there early. I commute to and from work, and my commute includes a ferry. The ferry schedule is much different from a bus schedule. A bus leaves every 10 - 15 minutes, while our state ferry system departs every 70 minutes on average. Planning around that schedule is challenging.  When you are on the ferry schedule, you must plan accordingly, which inevitably means you arrive early to your destination. Because if you are not early you will be late. There is not in between in this scenario. I know, I've tried them all.

I arrived a little before 630 PM and there were a smattering of people setting up. I met the county chair in person. She and I had been corresponding by email earlier in the week as I'd already decided to run for local office in 2018. She was expecting me. But no one was expected the 70+ who also decided to come to help re-organize the party. Twelve members of one of the local high school US Government class who had come to observe the meeting for a class project. But everyone else had never been to a Democratic Party meeting.

I sat back to just listen and not say much. I wanted to hear why all these people decided to come out to the meeting and what is what they thought they could do to change the party. 

Party members relayed how much the local party spent on the last election and for whom they had allocated funds. Democratic Women, Young Democrats, and others each took their turns to talk about the last election. 

It then came time for community members to speak.  Three middle age men were visibly angry. They wanted to make sure the party was going to change now. They had a few arguments, 1. ridding the party of super delegates (already slated to go away) 2. keeping Washington State primaries a caucus system (slated to go away) 3. sputtering anger that Bernie wasn't the nominee and lecturing the room about it.  Their anger was misplaced, and it made the room extremely uncomfortable. 

We moved on to others. One woman had just moved here from NY. As you know, my legislative district is represented entirely by Republicans.  We had a man who had a transgender son, and he was there because Democrats are the only ones who care about his son civil rights. 

While my local district is Red, it wasn't always that way. Norm Dicks had been our representative for decades, and because of the strength of his politics, our district had been blue for many years.  Now we flip back and forth blue, red, blue red. Democrats habitually run what I call the "perennial" candidates.  These people always run. Well, this next year one of those men has decided he will not run again, which has given me my opening in the party. But to be truthful, I would have taken him on in the primary if that had been the option. Sometimes you have to make your party richer by not allowing the same folks to keep running even though they continually lose. 

Before the night was over the chair asked if anyone had planned to run for office. I raised my hand. I was the only person raising their hand.  The room exploded, and a cheer went out. Suddenly folks began to approach me and wanted to talk. I did. I stuck around for a while and chatted with other attendees.  That was exhilarating.  Many of them were excited to hear that someone else would run, and it would be a woman. I collected business cards from people at the meeting and can only remember parts of what we discussed. It was a long day. 

Thursday, December 1 is my LD meeting.  I will let you all know what happens next!