Only 1,300 Kansas Democrats attended the Democratic caucuses in the 2004 presidential election, according to the Kansas Democratic Party. Last night, more than 4,000 Democrats caucused in Lawrence alone.

Kathy Greenlee, chair of the Abe & Jake’s Landing caucus, said the Democratic Party did not anticipate the number of people who showed up to caucus. Charles Jones, caucus chair at the Douglas County Fairgrounds, said it had been more than 20 years since he had seen a Democratic caucus as large as the one at the fairgrounds.

“I remember maybe in the 80s we had a caucus that mattered but nothing like this,” Jones said.

The party was forced to divide the caucus that was being held at Abe & Jake’s into two caucuses because of the unexpected number of people who showed up. The party had to send more than five hundred Democrats to Liberty Hall to participate in a joint Abe & Jakes/Liberty Hall caucus. Liberty Hall was originally a caucus location, but the party decided to relocate to the Douglas County Fairgrounds on Saturday because they feared the location would not be big enough. The capacity of Liberty Hall is 1,050 but more than 2,000 people showed up at the fairgrounds.

Greenlee said every time the Democratic Party held an event at Abe & Jake’s in the past 10 years, the venue had exceeded capacity. The party has had success on those occasions as well and the party enjoys holding events there.

Doug and Shirley Hitt, Lawrence residents, said they attended the caucus in Lawrence in 2004. They said the 2004 caucus was much smaller. Shirley said they were held in three rooms at Lawrence Memorial Hospital and 100 people at most were in their room.

“It’s good to see so many people show up,” Shirley said. “It seems like people have been pretty apathetic about politics. It seems like people really do want change.”

The Hitts said they voted for Kucinich in 2004 but that they caucused for Obama last night.

“Boy that was a hard one,” Doug said. “I felt like if McCain is the opponent, Barack would draw more of the independent vote.”

Mike Causely, Lawrence resident and Dennis Kucinich supporter, said the Democratic Party would need more unity to beat Senator John McCain in the presidential election, and Democrats at yesterday evening’s Douglas County caucuses agreed. They thought the party needed more unity in the future to have a successful caucus, let alone win the presidential election.

Shylo Bundy, Lawrence junior, said the caucus did not turn out how she expected. She said the Kansas Democratic Party Web site was unclear about what would take place at the caucus. She said that the caucus at Abe and Jake’s was unorganized.

“It’s kind of strange. There’s just a lot of people standing around,” Bundy said. “I think they should have had it somewhere bigger. I don’t think they really expected a lot of people to caucus.”

Colin Pates, Lawrence senior, said he had never been to a caucus and thought the caucus was a waste of time. He said it was clear the majority of people who came to caucus supported Obama.

“I wish they would have just been like, ‘It’s Obama? All right.’ Because it was pretty obvious,” Pates said. “To me, being a first time person here, it seemed like it was a little disorganized, but maybe that is just the way caucuses are.”

It was not just Douglas County Democrats who were left waiting in the cold. Greenlee said at 9 p.m. in Overland Park there were still 1,000 people waiting to caucus and that the police were helping control them. He said at that location of the party required them to hold the caucus in shifts.

When the numbers came in it was Obama who swept the Lawrence caucuses. Clinton did not have any delegates at the Abe & Jake’s and Liberty Hall caucus until several minutes before the caucus ended. Teresa Simms, who spoke on behalf of Barack Obama at the Abe & Jake’s caucus, said one of the best aspects of Obama was that he was raised by a Kansan.

“In my opinion, it’s gonna take a Kansan to clean up after the Bush administration,” Simms said.

Kansan staff members Alex Parker and Jessica Wicks contributed to this story.

—Edited by Matt Hirschfeld