Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

There were two hububs at yesterday’s State Democratic Convention. One was over a definition of who actually could vote on national convention delegates. Chairman Don Bivens explained the situation and it seemed to be resolved. The worry was that the statewide delegates would not be seated due to a technicality. Now, the DNC wouldn’t do that, would they?

The other, more serious controversy, was over the number of delegates that the two presidential campaigns struck from the list. Dritan Zela, a delegate from Maricopa County who was struck, sent a hyperbolic e-mail regarding the strikes. But, given where he grew up (he’s from Albania), I can understand his sensitivity to anything that smacks of a purge. Zela circulated a petition asking that the strikes be overturned. Bivens said that no action could be taken on this in part because the request wasn’t submitted far enough in advance. Given when people were informed of the strikes, I don’t see how this was possible.

I was particularly tweaked about the purge (I’ll use Dritan’s word), since members of my family were struck. I was also a bit perturbed because one campaign’s representative assured me that this wasn’t going to happen, and the other campaign wouldn’t give me an answer regarding if they were going to do it after sending me an e-mail saying they were going to compose an answer.

Frankly, there were many delegate candidates who should have been struck. I have a quadrennial irk about activists, and even elected officials, who throw in with one candidate or another at the last possible minute in an attempt to get a ticket to the big party. And let’s come right out and say it: politics can attract folks that are a bit…um…unique. If the campaigns would rather not have some of our more unhinged Democrats represent them, it is understandable.

I have to say that the strikes were handled better than in 2000 and in 2004. 2000 was the first time we had mass strikes when Al Gore’s campaign whittled the list down to the minimum number of candiates necessary to fill the delegation, thereby making the convention a formaility. The Gore campaign relented and allowed the other candidates to run in the end. In 2004, a state party staffer took it upon himself to use the strikes as a way to choose the delegation. Unfortunately, John Kerry’s campaign went along with this, however, Wesley Clark’s did not. At least this time, the campaigns left many candidates on the list which preserved some semblance of democracy.

What I found particularly galling was that candidates got struck, but there were still many remaining candidates who couldn’t be bothered to show up. In other words, people were purged to make room for people who were not interested in running.

As I said, I understand the reason that we allow campaigns to strike candidates; I just would like it to be used less often. If the campaigns are concerned that only people who were genuinely supportive of the candidate are running (a very understandable consideration in this year), I have a couple of ideas.

For one, let’s change the filing date for delegate candidates. This year, for example, district level delegates had until February 14th to file. This was nine days after the primary. This is an invitation for people who are not committed to a particular candidate to wait until they can see which horse will get them to the convention. It’s even worse for at-large and pledged party leaders who could have filed over a month after the primary. If my memory serves, the deadline in 2004 was a couple of days before the primary. Let’s do a bit more than that: make the deadline a couple of weeks before the primary. This would assure that people that are willing to commit early are the ones running for delegate.

Also, although this may be a problem with DNC rules, have the state meeting broken up into candidate caucuses like the district meetings are. I know we have done this in the past. This increases the likelyhood that state committee members choosing the final round of delegates would be folks who were familiar with the campaign and who is a genuine supporter. Heck, in a year like this, what was to prevent one campaign (I’m not naming names here) from having its supporters on the state committee vote for the easiest to sway potential delegate on the other side?

Every four years, we go through this exercise of writing a delegate selection plan that needs to be approved by the DNC to make sure it is open and inclusive. The way these strikes have been used the past few years runs in opposition to these objectives. Here’s to hoping this is the last year we have these sort of undemocratic mass purges.