By Joe Ragusa
BLOOMINGTON – A state senator from Bloomington is helping Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign.
Jason Barickman spent Monday night speaking to voters in Iowa.
“The interaction (with voters) is the thing that you can never understand enough of,” Barickman said. “The number of people that I met there who said they were truly undecided, but they gave me their perspective on the onslaught of attention that they’ve been given over the last many weeks.”
Barickman told WJBC’s Dan Swaney that there were 359 people in his Iowa precinct who listened to speeches from representatives of eight different presidential candidates, but once the representatives were done speaking, it was time to vote.
“Once they said it’s time to vote, you just jot down a name on your piece of paper, you throw it in a tub on your table and then some of the precinct workers come around, pick up all the stubs and they count them,” Barickman said. “They took about 30 minutes to count them up and then they announced the results for the precinct.”
Rubio won the precinct Barickman spoke at but finished third overall in Iowa behind Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. The Illinois primary is March 15.
Joe Ragusa can be reached at [email protected].