Road to the Democratic National Convention 2004

Yes, another weblog about politics. Sorry!

I set myself the task of being elected a delegate at each level when I decided to become active this year. That was in January of '04, shortly before the precinct caucuses on February 7. I was so ignorant of the entire process that I emailed the district chair and offered to host a precinct caucus in my house if necessary. :D

On February 7, I showed up at Auburn High School along with several hundred others. (!!!) I guess they wouldn't have fit into my living room. Found my precinct table - there were about four people already there. People continued to trickle in for the next half hour or so, and our precinct ended up with 8 people. That number was unfortunate, as there were two people strongly for Dean, five strongly for Kerry, and me the lone Kucinich supporter. Since I could not sway anyone to my preference, that meant that Kucinich did not meet the minimum 15% to receive a delegate from our precinct. I changed my preference to Kerry, but I'm still a Kucinich mole - I will do my level best to keep progressive principles on the table every step of the way.

It wasn't exactly challenging at this point to be selected as delegate to the Legislative District Caucuses, as we were allocated five delegates and two alternates. Since several people didn't even WANT to be delegates, all four of those of us who did were selected (and we dragooned the others to fill the remaining slots). Our precinct went 3 for Kerry and 2 for Dean. I was also instantly elected precinct caucus chair, without ever asking to be - I guess having a big mouth and low tolerance for disorganization helps in the political process! hahaha!

We found out when and where our district meetings were held every month. John and I started attending in March. I can't imagine why I haven't been doing this for years - this is where EVERYTHING starts in politics. I always wondered where one was supposed to cut one's political teeth. This is it. The very first meeting, I got to meet and ask questions of several candidates who'll be on the ballot in November, and meet all the party regulars in our district.

Fast forward to the Legislative District Caucus on May 1. We had about 30 or 35 candidates in the Kerry sub-caucus standing for election to the Congressional District caucus (19 delegate slots and 10 alternate slots available). This was my first experience of actual campaigning. Unfortunately, the logistics bit the big one; we were sub-caucusing in the same gym as the Dean folks, and there were no microphones (and the candidates in each sub-caucus were speaking simultaneously), so being heard was challenging, to say the least. I was thankful for my long-ago training in acting, which permitted my big mouth to be heard all the way up the bleachers.

My speech went over amazingly well. I'd composed it in the car on my drive home the night before. I was shaking like a leaf, and they cut me short (irritated the hell out of me, as they weren't being that draconian about the one-minute time limit with all the other candidates!), so I didn't even read the last two paragraphs, but the applause was prolonged. I received the single biggest vote of confidence in my life after that speech. A woman came up to me from the crowd while we were waiting for the votes to be tallied, and said that a lot of candidates talked about supporting families, but I was the only one she felt would support her family, as hers was a gay family. I don't know how she knew that, but she was 100% correct about my support for alternative lifestyles. Then she said something that blew me completely away. She said that she hoped I'd get elected as a delegate to National, and that if I did, and I needed financial support to be able to go to Boston, to give her a call. She handed me her card. I was stunned. No one has ever shown that level of confidence in me before. Hell, it's a month later and I am STILL stunned.

When the votes were finally tallied (after what seemed like hours - how long does it take to make tick marks, anyway?!), I finished #5 overall and #3 among the women, a very respectable showing given that those who finished higher than I did were all well-known party regulars. I was thrilled, of course. On to the Congressional District Caucus!

I was surprised to discover that people were ALREADY campaigning for National at the Legislative District caucus. I hadn't made up any handouts, as I didn't realize it was that competitive. I printed up a few - and boy, did that first draft stink - for the King County Convention the following week.

The less said about the County Convention on May 8, the better! The candidate speeches were great, but yuck, the platform stuff was asinine...quibbling for hours over semantics on something that should have been hashed out beforehand - which HAD been hashed out beforehand! - but apparently, no one ever likes the platform precisely as it is. Everyone had to add their own pet issues, or try to delete the ones they didn't like. Wow. We finally left at about 4:30, as we had dinner plans.

The week before the Congressional District caucus, I started to get campaign literature from candidates for delegate to National. Holy crap! I did not realize how seriously people campaign for this. I, of course, had not thought to get mailing lists of delegates. I started getting phone calls and emails, too. Yowza! I considered dropping out at this point - what chance did I have against some of these folks? I mean, one of the candidates was Yvonne Ward, who nearly beat Pam Roach out of her seat in the State Congress (damn, I wish she HAD, too - I voted for her!). Others were LONG-term party regulars, district chairs, things like that. I had no credentials - just my speech and my beliefs. But, based on how well I did at the Legislative District (and because I really wanted to deliver that speech again), I decided to run anyway.

Our Congressional District caucus was held May 29. I got there early - boy, was I nervous - and finally screwed up the courage to start handing out my flyers to people coming in. We were like a gauntlet that delegates had to run on the way in the door - poor people couldn't come in without having ten people thrust literature in their faces! It was easier with the other candidates, as we could just trade handouts. ;-)

To make a VERY long day a bit shorter, I'll just say we had about 30 men and 25 women on the list as Kerry candidates for National. Some weren't there - I don't know why, whether they'd decided not to run, changed presidential preference, or simply been unable to attend. We ended up with something like 20 women in the race for the 2 delegate and 1 alternate slots for Kerry.

After all the campaigning, in the final analysis, I really think most of the voting delegates made their decisions based on the speeches. I went about half-way through. I was taken aback by the fervor of the audience response to my speech; I had to stop twice for applause and once for a big laugh, and I got a prolonged ovation at the end. I still can't get over how well that speech was received.

Cut to the tallying of the votes for the female delegates. Four women made the final cut. I was one of the four (the others were all party regulars). There was a revote for two of the four of us. The delegates were announced: Yvonne Ward and Lindsay Scola. I then stood for election as alternate, along with about 12 others. I finished in a dead tie with another woman from my own district! Our district chair, who was tallying the votes, said, "Well, I support the candidate from the 47th District!" and Yvonne Ward jumped up and said, "The REDHEAD from the 47th!" (both the other woman and I are redheads). The final tally - I was sitting next to John, who was serendipitously present (he'd been working on the Eastside, finished early, and decided to drop by - he was just on his way to the restroom to clean up when he heard a familiar-sounding cough over the PA in the hall, and ran in just in time to hear my speech!). I was digging my fingers into his arm. The alternate delegate to the National Democratic Convention for the 8th Congressional District was announced.

Me.

On the basis of a 90-second speech.

I'm going to Boston!