Mitt Romney wins Camas GOP caucus

More than 700 people crammed into the Commons area at Camas High School on Saturday to vote in this year’s Republican caucus where presidential candidate Mitt Romney handily won the event’s straw poll.

The event was representative of all 23 Camas precincts and a total of 616 votes were cast for the four remaining GOP presidential candidates: Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich.Here’s how the votes tallied:

• Mitt Romney:  275 votes; 44.65%
• Ron Paul: 146 votes; 23.7%
• Rick Santorum: 132 votes; 21.4%
• Newt Gingrich: 63 votes; 10.2%

The turnout was much larger than expected and pressured party organizers to move the proceedings to the main Commons area at the center of the school. This caused about an hour delay, and kept voters waiting outside for long periods of time until the registration and precinct tables could be re-positioned.

Upon entrance voters registered their names, addresses, contact information and presidential preference.

Once settled into the new area, the precincts gather separately and reviewed party caucus rules. Each precinct voter acknowledged their presidential preference and whether they would want to be delegates to the county convention held on March 31.

The precincts voted on a pre-determined number of delegates, which were apportioned by the population of their respective precincts. For example, Precinct 960 voted on seven delegates and seven alternates. Of those seven delegates, four are Romney supporters, while three are Santorum supporters.

“I’m here to support Newt Gingrich,” said Caroline Cummings. “This is my first caucus event and there’s a lot happening here. I think Gingrich knows how to balance a budget and that’s one reason I support him.”

Ron Paul supporters appeared to dominate the caucus by wearing Paul hats, pins, and shirts – they were clearly very organized and very vocal. They had the Romney people worried.

“I support Ron Paul because he’s the most consistent,” said Brian Kashas. “And he can’t be bought.”

Scott Duer, a Santorum supporter, experienced his first caucus event. “There’s a lot to this,” he said. “I support Rick Santorum because I like that he’s a social conservative.”

Duer was elected as a delegate from Precinct 960 to move forward to the county convention. The county will vote on March 31 on which delegates to represent specific candidates at the state convention, which then choose the delegates to represent Washington at the GOP National Convention this summer in Florida.

Romney supporters won the day for the former Massachusetts governor.

“I like Romney because he’s a conservative, and has a proven record of fixing problems,” said Ben Yung. “I think he’s the only one that can beat Obama, and we have to beat Obama.”

It was just reported from Clark County GOP officials that Mitt Romney won the county’s straw poll with 37 percent of the vote. Ron Paul came in second, with 28.5 percent; Rick Santorum with 22.5 percent, and Newt Gingrich with 10.1 percent. Exact totals will likely be released on March 4.