| | In 2005, I lived in Washington, D.C., just a few blocks from the White House. So as if many liberals, Democrats, and Independents weren't already hanging their heads across the nation the week of W's second inauguration, I and my colleagues had to witness it up close. A week's worth of elaborate (and presumably expensive) balls and banquets were thrown by conservative interest groups, and their opulence was almost legendary because few liberals knew anyone who had actually seen one from the inside. Congress was not in session, but there were more limousines than ever cruising the streets and you could even spot tuxedos on the street. Slowly pulling their collective head from their collective ass (ha!), a few liberal interest groups fought back by sponsoring counter-inaugural events (shadow balls, demostrations, and what not), to start rebuilding their coffers for mid-term elections in 2006. One of these events was open to the public for a fairly reasonable price (I want to say $50, and yes, that's positively cheap for a big-name political event in DC), and their fliers were all over downtown. I knew a few people going and was open to it myself until I read the splash at the bottom: "No cowboy hats or boots!"
Now, I would not have worn cowboy attire to this event (I didn't and still don't own any), but I was offended. That whole Texas thing again. Whether I identify with it personally or not, Texas has a strong cowboy history and the event was designed to protest a former Texas governor, but the flier bugged me. W was born in Connecticut, raised by an oil millionaire, and didn't even own a ranch until the year before he ran for governor. His "cowboy diplomacy" has had about as much to do with long, cold nights on the Chisolm Trail as orange soda has to do with oranges. But even if W was a real cowboy, was that an excuse to reject anything and everything gaucho? Would they ban the word "ya'll" too? Yellow roses and starry nights? Acoustic guitars? Fajitas?
Jim Wright, Ann Richards, Molly Ivins, and Jim Hightower?
I hadn't wanted to own a cowboy hat and a pair of cowboy boots that badly since I was four, when my favorite TV show was The Dukes of Hazzard and my favorite song was "Take This Job and Shove It".
I.
I left out an important detail in Entry II. When we went to sign in, the wünder-delegate was not shown as a delegate on the sign-in sheet. While the rest of us trickled back to our seating area, she, the coordinator, and our precinct captain had to go up to the office and prove that she was a delegate. Fortunately, our captain had saved his original copies of our caucus sign-in sheets. He showed us the difference: the copy had a blank space where the original clearly said, "Delegate". No one said it allowed, but if the captain had faxed or photocopied the original, and the copy was clean (which it was), then the only reasonable conjecture was that someone had whited out the space. No one else in our precinct seemed to be affected, and after their visit to the office, the wünder-delegate was confirmed and allowed to sign in.
II.
I went back and reviewed some old emails about the convention. There was an alternate for Obama in our precinct named Johnny, but I don't know if it was the fellow I saw. Otherwise, not one alternate showed up for Obama from my precinct.
III.
If Saturday had been an exercise in the spirit of conviction being beaten down, Sunday was about healing rejuvenation through corporate tourism. I spent the day with a group of close friends, their siblings, and their children at Six Flags. I hadn't spent a full day there in a decade, and it was exactly what I needed. It helped that my friends were buying an army's worth of season passes, so the rest of us got free passes and a share of the discounts. The 15 or 16 of us broke off into various groups, but my main group of two adults and two kids spent less than $40 all day. It also helped that the friends' extended family was just as easy to get along with as their irreverent matriarch, whom I've known since I was 12. I even volunteered to take her 8- and 6-year old daughters on the Judge Roy Scream, and we had a blast. It was terrific fun, and I found it difficult to focus on my corporate cynicism (except when video screens displayed their new yellow-minstrel mascot... damn, what will Margaret Cho say?). I got to just laugh and scream and enjoy the day.
IV.
When I returned home Sunday night, I found an email from our precinct captain. He and his partner endured the entire convention, which had ended at 4am, eight hours after the last of us left. He said there was a good chance that all of our precinct's nominees for at-large delegates would be invited to Austin (some as alternates), but that he couldn't be absolutely certain about the Obama delegates. The nomination committee members for Obama had not shared their final decisions with him because he was a Clinton backer. 5 Clinton supporters from our precinct were selected as full delegates (including the captain's partner, who had already been elected as our caucus alternate). He also said that 60 at-large delegates and 20+ alternates from our district would attend state for Clinton, with 29 delegates and 60+ alternates for Obama. It sounded terribly skewed, but his later explanation was that since so many Obama supporters were voted in as caucus delegates, the at-large delegation had to compensate. I won't pretend to understand, since I thought they were supposed to be entirely independent processes.
V.
Monday I took back the bandanas. We never needed them and the coordinator never asked about them.
VI.
Also on Monday, the County Chair (different from the Convention Chair--I think the County Chair was the guy in the canary-yellow suit, but I could be wrong) sent everyone who had attended the convention a glowing email, full of cliché Democratic humor and statistical excuses as to why the convention was conducted so poorly. Lists were late or incomplete, software was full of errors, blah someone else's fault blah not deliberate blah. The incoming County Chair, who has already been elected but doesn't take office until after the state convention, is expected to form a committee to identify weaknesses and make recommendations for improvement. The current chair went on in his email to proudly saluted the volunteers and chairs of each convention, ask us all to make donations, and assure us that our conventions went swimmingly and "that democracy prevailed."
VII.
On Tuesday, April 8, Texas held runoff elections for state nominations with no majority winner in the original March primary. The big Democratic contest (and only vote on my precinct's Democratic ballot) was for Railroad Commissioner, which has nothing to do with railroads and everything to do with energy and extraction of natural resources. I had received a few emails about it from candidates and the Democratic party, but there was little media coverage. I saw my precinct captain outside the polls, but he was on the phone, so we didn't really get to talk.
As of noon, the same school/polling center that had hosted 150 Democrats at the caucus and that number many times over for the primary had seen fewer than a five Democrats and only ten Republicans. It would seem this year's strong draw for presidential politics has not bled into local politics, despite such races being more accessible to voters and often setting the political snowballs down the hill to Washington.
My candidate lost, but there's no time to mourn. There's a city election in May (and I'm already getting calls from one candidate looking for volunteers).
VIII.
My Houston friend has since admitted that things were not as smooth at her convention as she had led on--she had been forced to watch her words because a paranoid delegate kept snooping over her shoulder. I'm still waiting for her epic 6-part blog on the subject. :P
IX.
Here are a few local articles covering the convention I attended:
Delays frustrate delegates
Obama victor in weekend caucuses
Opinions on the conventions
A huge mess
IX.
The Wednesday after the SD10 convention, I received a call from the Texas Democratic party. I would be an alternate at the Texas Democratic Convention in June.
X.
I obtained a preliminary list of delegates and alternates from my district and found several familiar names and faces. My former bookstore manager was on there, as were at least three former classmates I haven't seen since 1997 or before (including my third grade best friend). They're all Obama alternates, and I hope I get to see them before Austin.
One name that was conspicuously absent was that of the wünder-delegate. I don't know if it was because her credentials had been missing off that official sheet or because there were already plenty of non-white young women supporting Obama, or if it was just a twist of political fate. It upset me all over again at our coordinator's polite insistence on being the delegate from our precinct, because I several times wanted to nominate the wünder-delegate instead. Of course, the coordinator is upset with the captain for telling everyone the young lady would be a shoe-in, but I haven't seen any response from him.
For her part, the wünder-delegate is being gracious about the whole thing. She hasn't publicly complained about the outcome in the least and is considering attending as a spectator. Far from being turned off by the whole mess, she was the first to respond when I emailed the young people of my district about gathering for coffee (though we haven't made it happen yet).
And Monday, I received a glowing email from the chair of our convention congratulating and thanking the Obama alternates for taking part. Then, in the very next line (you could imagine her reading it into a microphone without taking a breath), she informed us that our entire Alternate list was being challenged, to be resolved at the state convention.
See you in Austin.
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| | Posted 4/20/2008 4:26 PM - 47 Views - 2 eProps - 2 comments
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