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• ICE, ICE BABIES: Want to improve your neighborhood? The rage these days seems to be ice skating rinks. As ridiculous as it sounds, Worcester is experiencing an ice skating revolution, and may soon be home to three ice skating rinks within one square mile of each other. The city has long planned a rink behind City Hall on the Common; the Shrewsbury Street Merchants Association reportedly has a similar concept for Colombo (East) Park, and, over the weekend, volunteers worked to construct another rink at the Crompton Park basketball court. Just remember: That fir tree with lights still in it doesn't make us Rockefeller Center, guys.  • OBAMA v. CLINTON AT CLARK U: Worcester became the center of Massachusetts politics for a few days, leading to an intriguing duality at Clark University last Saturday afternoon. While Gov. Deval Patrick finished his speech on behalf of Barack Obama at Atwood Hall on the corner of Downing and Main streets, Hillary Clinton's advance team arrived at the Kneller Athletic Center, a block up Downing Street, to scope out the scene in advance of her Monday speech. • DEVACK PATAMA: Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between Barack Obama and Deval Patrick. It's understandable: Both are charismatic minority politicians with similar backgrounds on the South Side of Chicago, both speak in sweeping overtones of change and hope, and both are viewed as "outsiders." They even share a speechwriter. But Sen. Ted Kennedy might need a cheat sheet to tell the two apart. At Obama's Boston rally on Monday night, Kennedy repeatedly seemed to refer to Obama as "Deval" during his stump speech, confounding more than a few listeners. • CLINTON SURPRISE: Despite a Hillary Clinton campaign press release calling her Massachusetts victory the "upset of the night," few local Clinton supporters would acknowledge they were surprised at her win. Still, almost all admitted shock at her margin of victory locally and around the state. At a McFadden's "victory party" for Clinton, one local politician relayed that he and several office staffers had put a friendly "Price is Right"-style estimate on how much Hillary would win the state by. The winner guessed 10%, the highest margin guessed. • THE RACE THAT TIME FORGOT: The least contested race on Tuesday, by far, was the Republican State Committee race. Statewide, 38 out of the 80 seats had no candidate up for election; only a few seats were even contested. One of those "no candidate" seats was the First Worcester chair vacated by Peter Lukes, who chose not to run for re-election. While results aren't known yet, it looks like his seat may be filled by Bill McCarthy, who waged an aggressive write-in campaign for the post. • YOU'RE WITH WHO?: One of the biggest stories in Massachusetts remains the division of politicos, staffers and activists between Obama and Clinton. Some politicians refrained from any official endorsement, as not to offend either candidate's influential backers. It's become almost a punch line in political circles, with some staffers falling in line behind their bosses officially, while privately supporting the other candidate. Even at Clinton's Worcester rally on Monday, there were multiple reports of Obama supporters from the group who were enlisted to sit behind her on the stage. • TO HELL WITH WOLF BLITZER: We don't like to boast here at Worcesteria, but a quick note: The Daily Worcesteria blog (worcesteria.wordpress.com) was among the first local media outlets to call the local election for both Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton. In fact, the Daily Worcesteria beat Wolf Blitzer and CNN to the punch for Clinton in Massachusetts. Just for the record. • GOT OUT THE VOTE: Turnout in Worcester was strong, at least by Worcester standards. "Moving us up to be included in the presidential primary tripled [the participation]," says City Clerk David Rushford. According to unofficial results from the City Clerk's office, 32,314 ballots were cast, compared to 21,532 in the highly contested municipal election in November. That's about 33% turnout this time around. In the last presidential primary in 2004, before the date was moved to be part of "Super Tuesday," 11,007 voters (about 11%) turned out; only a hundred or so more showed up in 2000. The largest crowd in recent history was the general election in 2004; that drew 56,951 voters. The highest turnout across the city this week was Flagg Street School (Ward 1 Precinct 4) with 47.10% of registered voters; the lowest was at Great Brook Valley (Ward 2 Precinct 5) with 13.07%. According to Rushford, six precincts had more than 1,000 people vote. o
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