Washington caucuses: Obama's magic rubs off in Ballard

Editor's note: This is the first of a series about Washington's role in choosing the next president.

On a Saturday afternoon during a "sun break" in the Seattle rain, I went to a stranger's house to watch Barack Obama supporters prepare for the upcoming Washington state caucuses. The Seahawks were playing the Packers, and it felt, as I walked the uncharacteristically quiet streets, as if everyone in Seattle were tuned in to the game on TV somewhere. The host, Dave Morehouse, lives in a brand new three-floor duplex townhome in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood. In his living room, the game was indeed on but the sound muted. The townhouse was full of people who'd left their shoes at the door and were sitting around in stocking feet. Morehouse let the football game play in snowy pantomime (it was in Wisconsin) on his widescreen TV during the meeting, but few watched it.

What they watched was Morehouse himself, who emphasized the importance of the next few weeks leading up to the caucuses. In Washington, the caucuses are on Feb. 9, with the primary following on Feb. 19. If the results of the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday primary narrow the field to each party's top candidates, Washington could be a pivotal state in final candidate selection, Morehouse said. While Republican Party members can still hope to influence the candidacy at the primary stage, the Democratic Party in Washington does not use the primary to apportion delegates, so the caucus would be the last best hope for Obama delegates. "The game is in the caucus," Morehouse told the group.

Morehouse said he hasn't been involved in politics since 1992, when he caucused for Bill Clinton. He attributes his sudden activism to an "epiphany" on Christmas Eve when he talked about the upcoming election with his father and stepmother — who were in attendance at the meeting as "political tourists," they said.

Later, I asked Morehouse why Obama served as a catalyst for his return to political activism after 15 years. "Obama's message of change and hope, to me, comes at just the right time and is way more than a catchy campaign slogan," he says. "And it just seemed so fitting to me that this message comes to us from a man whose father was from Kenya and mother from Kansas, who was both a child of divorce – my own parents divorced when I was eight – and a student of the world, who both figuratively and literally embodies the diversity and promise of the American experience." Morehouse decided it was time to "put up or shut up," so he joined the Obama movement.

What he found was a true grassroots effort. He characterizes the central Seattle office for Obama as "not particularly organized at this point." His comment doesn't come off as a criticism but rather conveys the spontaneity of the central office's establishment. Morehouse and another attendee at the meeting, Carrie Evans, agree that it's a very active place, where "a lot of volunteers help each other out," a place where you can attend caucus training any Sunday afternoon at 1 pm. But make sure you get there around 12:30 to get a spot, suggests Evans. There have been crowds.

Evans and a friend, Jika Knight, a law student in his 20s, had been to the 36th legislative district caucus training that morning and were well prepared to dig in. They fit the profile of the young Obama supporters who turned out in droves in Iowa to capture victory for their hero. I'd expected more Carries and Jikas, but they were the only two in the room. The rest were gray-haired or merely wizened or at least in their 30s. One had caucused for Howard Dean in '04. Another wanted to learn about the caucus process and would in turn educate her friends about how to influence candidate selection.

Influencing candidate selection was the point of the meeting, and Morehouse got to it with panache. "This is a volunteer effort, so whatever you can do is great," he said. However, the Obama for America people would be arriving in town soon, and they would bring performance goals with them. Within the first week, the volunteers will be expected to recruit Obama supporters to their teams. Two weeks before the Feb. 9 caucuses, they and their teammates will go door-to-door and make phone calls to secure caucus support for Obama. "It'Â’s a lot of footwork," Morehouse said.

There were 15 in attendance including the political tourists, the journalist, and her photographer, so only 10 were left to cover two caucuses in two zip codes, or 97 precincts. Marie-Louise Kayinamura, who is not a U.S. citizen, volunteered to canvass even though she is ineligible to participate in the caucus. The original goal of the meeting was to divide into teams, but there were enough activists only to assign a team captain to each caucus location. Thus, the first step would be to build their teams, working first from a list of Obama supporters, which number 260 in one zip code and 300 in the other.