(CNN) – You know you're in Vegas when victory at a caucus precinct comes in the form of a card draw.
On Saturday, Sen. Hillary Clinton won the caucus at Mojave High School in North Las Vegas when one of her supporters pulled out the queen of hearts — besting the 10 of spades for Obama.
Tom Komenda, a Clinton supporter, told CNN there was an even number of supporters for the two candidates — 48 each. But the caucus had five delegates, so they couldn't be split evenly.
How to break the tie? A good old fashioned card draw. Carrie Giddins — a Democratic organizer — confirmed to CNN that indeed, that's how the race at Mojave High was ultimately decided. "That's the rule," she said.
Komenda — who sent CNN the story via I-Report — said a sealed deck was unwrapped. But as the shuffling started, he was concerned that the shuffler might have been shuffling in a way that exposed the faces of the cards to some of the nervous onlookers.
"I said, 'Wait wait wait — if we have to do this idiotic thing with cards, we're going to shuffle them the way they're supposed to be shuffled,'" he told CNN, laughing. "Then they said, 'If you want to shuffle, come down here and shuffle. So I went down and shuffled!"
Komenda says an Obama supporter drew first, and up came the ten of spades. Next, a Clinton supporter drew, and a queen of hearts decided the tie-breaker in favor of Clinton. So the final delegate count was two delegates for Obama, and three for Clinton.
It all ended, he said, in "cheers from one side of the room, groans and boos from the other."
Those cheering ended up rewarding Komenda — he was chosen to be one of the delegates for Clinton.
–CNN's Josh Levs
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