By Dominick D’Agostino | City of MacArthur, Cameron County

Last night, the end of the first full day of Badger Boys State saw the progression of the city and county meetings as they led to the County Caucuses.

As a Press Corps member, I was initially thinking my role would be nonexistent and that the meeting would leave something to be desired, but as the night unwound, my mind was forced to reach a new conclusion. The meeting, I thought, was a complete success for the Federalists, though partisan issues aren’t really at the forefront of this analysis.

My overview is rather of the whole situation, which seems to have been very effective.

We started the meeting by electing a County Chairmen which went to Federalist candidate Eben, who had previous experience with the position, and continued to speak on the agenda. Once again, as the meeting started, it was emphasized that the delegates were the only members of the county’s congregation that could assume roles, and as the citizens were barred from speech, or so I thought, it appeared to be a futile attempt to include those in the process who were role-less.

However, I was seriously mistaken, as the audience members were then met with the duty to decide slogans and other issues that were present in the committee meetings that were then held afterword. It was suddenly made clear that this truly will be an experience for everyone to participate in, and the Federalist delegates did a fantastic job of listening to their constituents, proposing their ideas and participating in the meeting.

The party also chose to adopt its platform, which emphasizes many things including an important provision about more shower time and truly shows the advantage of a group collaborative effort. I realized two important things during the caucus, though, the first being an epiphany about the interesting elections to come and the second about the responsible leadership which became glaringly clear during the very important county meeting.