by Ed Wallace & USN Staff – 3/28/2016 – 9:49pm

The Washington County Republican Party is still working on the delegate list from their caucus last Wednesday. The county convention is April 16, and the state convention is April 23 and candidates still can not get the names of the delegates that can vote for them.

According to CNN, with 91% of the precincts reporting, the winner of the Washington County Presidential Preference Poll was CRUZ with 7,801 votes (62.28%); TRUMP with 3,090 votes (24.67%) and KASICH with 1,634 votes (13.05%). A spokesperson for Washington County GOP said today that 100% of the vote was in and “we will have to compare the … CNN numbers with our final totals.”

On the other side of the aisle, Zac Almaguer, chair of the Washington County Democrat Party, released their poll results last Thursday. The totals are 1,509 votes for Bernie Sanders and 660 for Hillary Clinton. Zac said that “The turnout was three times expectations and spread out over four locations. It was insane and fantastic”. Their convention will elect 89 delegates on April 2nd at 2 P.M. at the Tonaquint Intermediate School in St George. Note: In a poll published a few days before the caucus, both Sanders and Clinton would beat Donald Trump in Utah.

The Republican delegate issue is not confined to Washington County. The Utah County Republican Party is still working on their delegate lists also. But, in what some refer to as SOP, some candidates have had some lists since the night of caucus. This has created an uneven six-day playing field and advantage for those candidates. By the weekend, some of the Legislative Chairs started giving their scanned lists to the candidates that asked for them.

Senator Curt Bramble had a portion of his delegate list last Tuesday night by 9:00 p.m. Richard Jauss, who is campaign manager for Senator Deidre Henderson, Rep, Keith Grover, and Rep Christopherson had their delegate lists on Wednesday.

Mr. Jauss conducted the caucus elections for county delegate and his wife counted the votes. It is assumed by many that Richard would vote for Keith Grover once he was elected county delegate. There was no mention of Richard’s financial relationship and employment with Keith Grover’s campaigns or the money he has been paid and will be paid this year. Keith Grover has paid Jauss $1,740.00 since 2012 for campaign work and has hired him for 2016 (1/23/2014 $240.00 – 9/19/2014 $250.00 – 3/9/2012 $1,250.00). None of the elected officials of the UCRP were available to comment.

In Davis County. The Davis County GOP Party chair, Robert Anderson said that the delegate list was available last Thursday with what information they had and has been updated since.

Here in Washington County, A quick survey of candidates revealed that they had not received any information yet but were expecting something by the end of today. Some expressed frustration with the delay and mentioned that they only had three weeks to knock on up to 500 doors.

As of 8pm this evening, delegate information was not available. A reliable source, familiar with the process but outside of the official leadership, told USN “There are four people who haven’t done this before… 4 cooks in the kitchen each doing it their own way.” Another candidate suggested that the leadership prioritize the information that is released in order of importance. For instance, notifying the candidates of delegates that relate to their campaign is more important than manually inputting the names of every caucus attendee.

Some candidates are piecing together a partial list by tracking down and calling leaders in each precinct as well as people who they know that attended a caucus. Another factor in the delay may be the new unfamiliar database system and the first ever Presidential contest. Whatever the reasons, the candidates may still have to spend a few more days scrambling for information before they can get their campaigns really moving.

https://disclosures.utah.gov/Search/PublicSearch/FolderDetails/1913?sooID=1411326

https://disclosures.utah.gov/Search/PublicSearch/FolderDetails/1913?sooID=1411326

https://disclosures.utah.gov/Search/PublicSearch/FolderDetails/1913?sooID=1409985