The Kistap Sun wonders about if things are settled out by February 9, whether there will be any attraction to taking two hours out of your Saturday to express your views on a done deal.

But, with the expected high turn out an essential element of a plan by the state party to recruit a bunch of new volunteer foot soldiers, will bad turn-out to the caucuses hurt the governor’s re-election campaign?

DWE spells it out pretty clearly:

February 5th is the day of a slew of state primaries…what Dwight Pelz calls Stupid Tuesday. On Tuesday February 5th, the field will be substantially narrowed. It may even be that one candidate gets enough votes to effectively end the nominating process.

A done-deal nomination would be bad for party activists because it would let the air out of the excitement around the caucuses. All of us will by then have put in hours of planning and spent lots of money preparing for the caucuses. If we get low turnout, we will miss the chance to recruit new folks into the party. We will miss the chance to meet the “Challenge from the Chair” of getting an increase in voter turnout. I also shudder to think of the money we might lose.

Last year, state chair Pelz was puttering around the state, promoting his Challenge from the Chair, a plan to recruit folks out of the caucuses, engage them in the party and in the governor’s campaign and get so many new Gregoire voters in each county.

No matter what sort of name calling Pelz uses on the February 5 contests, if one campaigns wins out on the 5th and no one shows up here on the 9th, his plan to recruit a bunch of new folks look pretty bad. Or, if it goes, three ways, he looks like a genius. Either way, its a bit scary for me.