Denver or Bust!
New Mexico Democrats head to the convention of the century (and so do we)
By: Dave Maass 08/19/2008
THE VOTE
Wednesday, Aug. 27
A total of 4,069 delegates will vote for the presidential nominee, but because some of those delegates only have half-votes (it sucks to be Guam), only 4,048 votes will be cast. If for some reason Obama doesn’t win 50 percent of the vote the first time around (say, Clinton is put on the nomination roll and there’s a last minute revolt), the delegates will vote again. That hasn’t happened since 1952, when Adlai Stevenson won the nomination on the third ballot.
THE STANDING COMMITTEES
The speaking schedule alone makes the DNC seem like the Coachella of Soapboxing (or, to Republicans, the Warped Tour of Grandstanding), but it’s also a convention like any other, where committees convene to discuss internal policies within the Democratic Party.
Credentials Committee
Initially, the Democratic Party stripped Florida and Michigan of all their delegates because the states bumped up their primaries to January. The party as a whole had decided that only Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina were allowed to throw primary elections and caucuses before Feb 5., Super Duper Tuesday.
Clinton won both states (Obama wasn’t even on the Michigan ballot) and many observers criticized her when she began selling the “every vote should count” argument since she’d signed the same no-campaigning pledge as Obama. Nevertheless, Clinton’s people took their case to the DNC’s Rules & Bylaws Committee in May, a strategic move Huffington Post characterized as a “scorched earth” tactic, and the shot-heard-around-the-world in an emerging Democratic Party civil war.
In the end, Rules & Bylaws agreed to a complicated vote-split agreement that left each of those states’ delegates with a half-vote.
But, before the delegates can officially nominate Obama, the issue of Florida and Michigan will be debated before the DNC’s Credentials Committee. The committee can’t undo the prior decision (i.e. re-strip the states of their delegates), but they can choose to reinstate the delegates’ full votes. And that’s exactly what the Obama camp has asked New Mexico’s Credentials Committee member John Wertheim to support.
“I think that people tend to overestimate the amount of division while the primaries were going on and underestimate people’s ability to look past those divisions and come together,” Wertheim, one of Clinton’s most aggressive supporters in New Mexico, says. “I know from personal knowledge that the Hillary people are excited to be supporting Obama and we’re really going to be working hard to make sure that New Mexico is in his column come election day.”
Wertheim fought hard following New Mexico’s caucus to secure as many delegates as possible for Clinton, including a legal challenge to Colón’s decision to nominate Laurie Weahkee, a Native American activist, as a superdelegate. At the time, Weahkee had largely been presumed to be an unannounced Obama supporter.
“The [‘Weahkee-Colón issue’] is certainly not going to come up in the committee because I was the one that was upset about it,” Wertheim says. “We made a decision that it was fine and we certainly weren’t going to risk party unity over the issue. It was all resolved very amicably. There will be no [delegate credential] challenges from New Mexico.”
Rules Committee
Like the Credentials Committee, the Rules Committee could have been the site of a tooth-and-nail show down if Clinton hadn’t conceded in June. In essence, neither candidate won enough delegates from the primaries to secure the nomination. Instead, superdelegates (elected officials and party insiders) ultimately put Obama over the top and, technically, they can change their votes at the last minute on the convention floor.
The Rules Committee debates the rules for the convention itself (as opposed to the Rules & Bylaws Committee, which debates the entire party’s rules) and therefore controls that part of nomination process.
Obama-supporter John Pound, New Mexico’s representative on the Rules Committee, now says Rules will likely be the least sexy of the three meetings in Denver.
“A couple of months ago it was conceivable that the Rules Committee, when it met in Denver, might have some thorny issues to deal with,” Pound, a six-time DNC delegate, says. “A week out now, I have no reason to believe and no one’s told me that there’s going to be anything contentious. It probably won’t be the most exciting television for viewers who watch such things on C-Span.”
Platform Committee
If party unity has taken the wind out of the Credentials and Rules Committee, it’s only strengthened the importance of the DNC’s Platform Committee, which sets the priorities for the party for the coming term. That’s ultimately a good thing for New Mexico; Madrid was tapped by national party Chairman Howard Dean to join Obama-buddy Gov. Deval Patrick and Discovery Channel CEO Judith McHale as co-chairs of the committee.
The committee will approve a 50-page document detailing the party’s goals on issues ranging from civil liberties to health care to poverty. But to Madrid, the process was as important as the policies. Obama, she says, allowed voters to form their own discussion groups and caucuses and to file their proposals through the candidate’s Web site.
“We had over 1,600 meetings registered and that means thousands and thousands of people were involved in this process,” Madrid says. “This is the way Obama does everything, not only on the platform committee, but in the way he’s delivering his acceptance speech, opening it to 80,000 people instead of just the party insiders.”
Health care and retirement came up time and time again during the meetings, Madrid says. But Ellen Bernstein, New Mexico’s other representative on the committee, hopes to bring up the problems caused by No Child Left Behind.
“It’s hurting children, it’s hurting schools, it’s hurting teachers, it’s hurting everybody,” Bernstein, president of the Albuquerque Teachers Federation says, “We need to get rid of the whole thing and I’m hoping that the Democrats, Obama in particular, will be able to lead us into a new role for the federal government in public education.”
But it’s Bernstein’s first convention and she’s not sure yet how to be the most effective.
“I figure it’s going to pretty overwhelming, “ she says. “[The Democratic Party of New Mexico] has been great about calling us delegates together to talk about what to expect, but it’s not like those conversations lead me to a deep understanding. There’s going to be a lot of playing it by ear and managing the crowds in the process.”
Full, live and interactive coverage of SFR at the DNC can be found on our Swing State of Mind blog.
EXTRA: Charting the Democratic "Web of Power"
Also related: Interview with NM Lt. Gov. Diane Denish and the low-down on protesting at the DNC
