Saturday morning, Jan. 27, Republicans gathered at the Pettis County Courthouse to be trained on the caucus process.
Three representatives of the Missouri Republican Party handed out packets, gave out information and answered questions on the 2024 caucus. Carla Young was known to many in the room as she wears many hats in the Missouri Republican Party.
“When we’re here and we're starting this, I’m the Pettis County chair,” Young said, “and then in April, I'm the congressional chair for the 4th Congressional District. When we go to State, I'm the State committeewoman for the 28th Senatorial District and I'm on the executive committee, so take your choice.”
Young, Chandler Hayes and Trey Faucheaux from Jefferson City took the time to explain the Republican caucus process to interested Republicans from across the 4th District.
Stormy Taylor is the Recorder of Deeds in Johnson County and made the trip to Sedalia with others for the training.
“We're here today to learn more about the caucus process to make sure that when we get ready to do it in Johnson County, we have the process down,” Taylor said. “Over here in Pettis County, they have some great leaders and some great ways of doing things, and we just want to make sure that we're mirroring that in our county and doing the process right.”
And there are three GOP caucuses this year at three different state levels.
Faucheux is a data specialist with the Missouri Republican Party and helped Young convey the intricacies of the different gatherings.
“We're training the Republicans on how to run and participate in the upcoming caucus on March 2,” Faucheux said. “March 2 is the local caucus. We also have follow-up conventions on April 6, also here in Sedalia for the 4th Congressional District, as well as the State convention on May 4, and that'll be down in Springfield.”
Without a Republican presidential preference primary in Missouri this year, things have changed some, but the process is still mandated and officials must adapt.
“This is another avenue to vote for president,” Faucheux said. “We don't have the luxury of holding the primary anymore; the Legislature did what it did, and we must respond according to our rules. We're going to run the process as smoothly, effectively as we can, and we hope as many Republicans can participate as want to.”
Guiding the scores of trainees through the new process in advance makes certain everyone is properly represented and trained.
“It's different than what we've done before,” Young explained. “We've always had the caucus every four years, but the plurality thing we've never had to do and how we must handle delegate allotment and everything else is just different. They've mirrored it off the Iowa caucuses, which is different than what we've ever done, so it's important to train everybody to make it as smooth as possible.”
While Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, the Missouri GOP is keeping the door open for others in the race, like Nikki Haley and late-comer pastor Ryan Binkley.
“Technically, there are still two more in the race,” Young said. “Binkley, he came in late, and the State party allowed him to with a penalty because our cutoff time was Oct. 31, but people could still nominate and we'll still have to go through the process of moving those people around. It's getting everybody's vote counted.”
Young said the Missouri GOP will begin a campaign blitz to get more people involved in this year’s electoral process and attending the caucuses.
“We're going to have 500 people, I want as many people as possible there,” Young said, “because I never want to take away the vote of the people ever. I wish that we still had the presidential preference primary, I think that was a better system.”
Young has been with the Missouri GOP for a while but appreciates the two young men helping explain the details of the process concisely and quickly.
“I've been the county chair here for 23 years,” Young said. “These are guys that are on the state committee, they work for the state party, so they've been at all the training. Now that we've gotten that done, kind of work out the bugs and after it’s smoothed out, we got done in record time. Some of them were like three and four hours.”
For more information on the Missouri GOP platform or the 2024 caucus process, visit www.Missouri.GOP.
Chris Howell can be reached at 660-530-0146.
