I Want a Voice Part 4 – The Texas State Senatorial District Convention

At the conclusion of our caucus the delegates and alternates were told that they would receive information about the time and location of the state senatorial district convention, to be held on March 29. Two weeks went by and I received nothing. I contacted the caucus secretary who was to receive all of this information from the caucus chairperson. No information was received from the chairperson. Voice mail and email messages received no return calls or messages. So, all information that we received was after contacting the Texas state party office directly. We were told the location and that registration for credentials would begin at 7:00 AM. No other details were provided.

I arrived shortly before seven and got in line. Ahead of me were at least 1,000 people, maybe more. People were milling around searching for other members of their precinct. Some precincts were more organized than others, having large signs made to gather all of their delegates in one place. Ours was not organized at all and it was only by luck that the five Obama delegates found each other. The caucus secretary made a small sign with our precinct number on it and walked the length of the line to find other delegates from our precinct. She returned with one person, a Clinton alternate.

The six of us stood there quite puzzled that there were not more delegates from our precinct there, especially me expecting a total of 39 delegates, there could have been 78 if all delegates and alternates showed up. I found out later that this convention was only for the caucus delegates, so the most that we could see there were 26 from our precinct, 13 delegates and 13 alternates. We figured that once we got inside the arena we would find the others.

Things seemed quite disorganized, as they were at the caucus. We stood in line outside for two hours, the line never moved. At 9:00 AM we were all moved inside and told to sit in the area marked with our precinct sign. Good, we thought, this will help us find the other delegates and alternates from our precinct. One of us walked up and down all of the bleacher steps and did not find our precinct sign. So we just found an empty place and sat down.

Nothing happened for quite awhile. I do not remember how long it was before they finally figured out how to get us registered. I was told much later that there was a lot of stupid stuff going on behind the scenes that contributed to this long delay. More on that later.

Finally, they carried in a number of long tables and placed them at each end of the floor, placing a number on each table. Someone explained that we would be called by precinct to a specific table to sign in and receive our credentials. At that time we figured we would be united with the other delegates from our precinct.

This was a long process. We waited for hours to be called and when our turn arrived we went to the table and signed in. This process was similar to the one at the caucus, except that our names were already on the sign-in sheet. All that we had to do was indicate our candidate preference and indicate if we were handicapped, under 35 years old, black, Hispanic, or homosexual. I asked the person behind the table if I had to answer these questions and she said no. Long pause and when I realized that she was not going to say anything else I asked her why they were collecting the information. The reason is for the party to ensure that all of these groups would be represented at the state convention. This seemed reasonable so I answered the questions.

When we were finished we went back to our spot in the bleachers. There were still only six of us. No additional delegates or alternates signed in. We speculated on what would be next an agreed that one or more of us would be voted to attend the state convention. Seeing that he was outnumbered the Clinton alternate decided that there was no reason to stay so he left. I am not sure that he would have had a vote anyway because he was not a delegate. He should have been elevated to delegate when no other Clinton delegates arrived, but this seemed to be missing from this process. Plus he would have left anyway.

So we sat there for awhile longer until a person on the loudspeaker asked us to identify ourselves so that one of our delegates could find us. This person, a Clinton delegate arrived extremely late, which was smart on her part because she did not miss anything.

Throughout all of this waiting we were treated to campaign speeches by numerous politicians, including Sheila Jackson Lee, a Clinton superdelegate, who was nearly booed out of the place. This went on and on, I guess to keep us somewhat entertained as they tried to complete the registration process.

Finally at 3:45 PM everyone was registered and they had determined how many delegates would need to be chosen for the state convention from each precinct. We were told that the delegate count for the entire senatorial district was split 1,101 for Obama and 445 for Clinton. A representative from each precinct was asked to come to a table set up in the middle of the floor to receive a packet of instructions. This turned out to be a free for all. There was no organization, naturally, and no thought put into this process because it about 45 minutes for our representative to retrieve our packet.

When she returned we learned that we needed to elect one delegate and one alternate to attend the state convention in Austin, to be held on June 5-7. No one stepped up to volunteer so I agreed to do it so that we could get out of there. It was going on 5:00 PM and it had been a long day. I was very hungry because the only thing available was a snack bar that served nachos and popcorn, for which I opted to pass. A person agreed to be the alternate, we filled out the necessary paperwork and we finally got out of there at a little past 5 o’clock.

To sum it up, I spent 10 hours on a beautiful Saturday to sign a registration form and fill in a delegate information form. The total time of actually participating in this process was no more than 10 minutes.

During the time leading up to the state convention I learned that some shenanigans were occurring that contributed to this long day. A person who is a real motivated IT person got involved to help automate the process for the state senatorial district convention. She entered all of the delegates and alternates that were elected at each precinct caucus to create the forms that we signed. On the day of our convention some persons associated with the party, I do not know what authority they had or if they were part of a committee or what, went through the lists and started crossing off names, indicating that they did not want certain people involved. The IT person stepped up and said that this was illegal and got party leadership to put a stop to this practice.

So the folks who tried to eliminate certain delegates decided that the sign-in sheets would be used as a reference document. Each delegate and alternate would have to write this same information on a separate piece of paper and place it in a ballot box type of container. This is what was happening at 7:00 AM. They were letting people into the arena a few at a time to do this. It was taking a long time and when party leadership determined that this was quite inefficient they scrapped it for the direct sign-in on the sign-in sheets. It turns out that the folks who implemented the separate page system were going to eliminate the same folks that they had crossed off the lists by tossing out the separate pages that contained these folks information. This does not give me a lot of confidence that any of this stuff is being executed using a fair and equitable process. I can’t say that I am at all surprised.

So, what happened to all of the Clinton delegates? After all, had they shown up there would have been Clinton delegate sent to the state convention from our precinct instead of one supporting Obama. Our caucus secretary was told that after only six of us signed in they somehow investigated and determined that the seven missing delegates were Republicans. How this was determined I do not know, but that is what they claimed. If this is really true then the Rush Limbaugh suggestion to Republicans to cross over and vote for Clinton did occur on our precinct. This seems plausible because I was totally shocked at the number of people who showed up for our caucus. My precinct is extremely blue, being predominately white, rich and old. Even though I possess two of those characteristics I continue to maintain independence from either party. However, by agreeing to be a delegate at the state Democratic convention I was teetering very close to losing my independence.