Some weird things happened at last Saturday’s Clark County Republican convention at Prairie High School, where it was demonstrated that democracy is too important to be left to party activists.

Weird item 1 — Paul prevails: Arizona Sen. John McCain, who will be the Republican presidential nominee and who was the choice of local voters in the Feb. 19 Washington presidential primary, was left in the dust by Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, the anti-Iraq war, anti-tax, anti-big government libertarian.

Highly motivated and disciplined Paul supporters outnumbered McCain forces and thus will send more delegates to the state convention in Spokane next month. Never mind that in the statewide primary two months ago McCain carried Clark County with 44 percent of the Republican votes to 27 percent for Mike Huckabee and 20 percent for Mitt Romney, with Paul getting just 6.5 percent.

The votes that counted at the local convention were based on the Feb. 9 precinct caucuses, and on Saturday it was Paul’s people who showed up.

“McCain people weren’t interested in spending a whole Saturday afternoon indoors at a convention,” said Brent Boger, a McCain backer who was there.

Getting a final and official tally from the local GOP leaders was impossible this week. Even new county chairman Ryan Hat said he didn’t know the numbers. But, based on estimates of several who had leadership roles Saturday, it’s clear that Paul outpolled McCain by a substantial margin overall. Most of that margin was built among participants from the 18th Legislative District of north and far east Clark County, where Paul forces captured between 25 and 28 of the 30 delegate slots bound for the state convention.

“The Ron Paul people were organized and had done their homework,” said veteran party activist Kathy McDonald.

Paul’s forces big in Spokane, too

If local Republicans are mortified by the thought of the county party sending more Paul delegates than McCain delegates to the state convention, they can take solace knowing what happened at the Spokane County GOP convention was even weirder.

The Paul forces “ate McCain’s lunch,” a Spokane reporter told me, vastly outnumbering them and pushing through a get-out-of-Iraq-fast plank in the local party platform. That must be a real hit at state GOP headquarters and at the altar of pre-emptive war in the White House.

Weird item 2 — Lothspeich locked out?: In another piece of business, delegates to the GOP county convention voted for their favorite candidate for the north county seat on the county Board of Commissioners. Democrat Betty Sue Morris is not running again.

Morris herself is crossing party lines to endorse retired Fire District 6 Chief Brad Lothspeich, who also is backed by Boger, the county party’s state committeeman, and Republican Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey.

But on Saturday at Prairie High School, former state Rep. Tom Mielke had the most support, 46 percent to 25 percent for Ridgefield City Councilman Matt Swindell and 24 percent for Lothspeich. That’s despite Mielke, a former state legislator, having previously lost two races for the job. In 2004 Morris beat him, so he moved south into a different commissioner district where, in 2005, he lost to Democrat Steve Stuart.

Now, Mielke apparently has moved back north and is trying again for the Morris seat.

But here’s the rub. Candidates who don’t have support of 25 percent of the county-convention delegates are supposed to be locked out of access to party resources, such as the office, phones and its databank with names and addresses of GOP-leaning voters and donors.

“As the policy is set up, he (Lothspeich) won’t have access to the database for the primary,” Hart told me.

But by midweek, moderate party activists were picking themselves up off the floor and predicting the 25-percent rule will be rescinded in Lothspeich’s case.

The big picture in all of this is that party activists are more likely than average voters to like — and to nominate for public office — candidates who are on the ideological extremes. These extremist proclivities afflict both parties and contribute to such antidemocratic actions as their support for the demise of our late, beloved blanket primary.

Gregg Herrington’s column of personal opinion appears on the Other Opinions page each Friday. Reach him at gregg.herrington@columbian.com.

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