Supposedly the big news out of last weekend’s Democratic Party of Virginia Convention was Mark Warner’s unqualified statement that he’s out of the race for VP. I didn’t consider it news; after all, he said essentially that on a press conference call last Monday. Either the press at the convention didn’t hear it or they weren’t on the call 😉
I managed to get a few minutes with Senator Jim Webb prior to his speech and asked him the same question. Unless I completely misunderstood him, Webb also said that he wasn’t interested in being VP. (I did ask twice, by the way.) Unfortunately, I didn’t get his exact words.
I went to the convention with one thing in mind: getting elected as an at-large delegate to the convention. As the result, I didn’t spend a whole lot of time inside listening to the speeches. I’m told that most of the speeches were quite good; in particular, several people commented on how well 2nd District candidate Glenn Nye spoke. The convention itself was long – way too long in my humble opinion. And, believe it or not, there was no lunch break! Folks literally had to miss parts of the speeches in order to grab a bite to eat. With all of the facilities around the Hampton Convention Center (located adjacent to the Hampton Coliseum), it was a shame that the only alternative was an overpriced ($15!) lunch in the room next to the exhibit hall.
The convention kicked off a little after 10am and it wasn’t until nearly 4pm that we broke up into our separate – Clinton and Obama – caucuses to elect our PLEO (which stands for Party Leaders and Elected Officials) and at-large delegates. Nearly six hours – and the real work was yet to be done. Several people that I saw earlier in the day had left by that time, which was a real shame.
Because the caucus voting took so long (I understand the Obama caucus tallying took about 4 hours), we never did come back together as a group. Another disappointment.
While we were in our caucus, it became quite clear that with the large number of first-time attendees, it would have been useful to have had some things explained. For example, people seemed to not understand the situation with the slate and how the slate had been chosen. What was happening around me was people were asking that question as we were voting. My guess is that part of this had to do with timing – the deadline for filing the slate was Wednesday at 5pm, leaving little time for the information to be public or for others to organize a competing slate. The members of the DNC slate sent out a couple of emails with the bios and photos of each member, but even those came late last week. I’d like to see the deadline for filing slates moved up a bit, giving not only the slate members time to campaign, but also giving others who are not on the slate the same opportunity. I don’t recall exactly when the list of delegates to the convention made it to the DPVA website but I know that I only received a couple of emails from folks who were running who were not on the slate.
I will say that tensions were running a little high by the time we got to the caucuses and I attribute a lot of this to the six hours of stuff that took place before. I got a chance to talk to DPVA executive director Levar Stoney about this while waiting for the caucus results. As it turns out, Levar never made it to bed Friday night, so I doubt if he remembers anything I said to him. Here’s what I told him that I think would make the convention more enjoyable for newcomers and old timers alike.
First, take the first couple of hours of the convention to do a little business and hear a few speeches. Then break for lunch for an hour. After that, convene the caucuses. After the voting is complete, reconvene the entire convention for more speeches. This would also be the time to elect the DNC members and the electors. While those are taking place, count the votes. Once the counting is completed, announce the results, have a final unifying speech, and then let the partying begin. If it can’t be done in a single day, start Friday evening with some of the procedural stuff.
Oh yeah – and get a better sound system 😉
I know the DPVA staff worked very hard to make this convention as enjoyable as possible. It was a difficult task and my hat’s off to them for having gotten it done. It was good to see a lot of folks from around the state – I’m not about to start naming them because I’ll no doubt leave somebody off the list. Congrats to all who were elected yesterday, condolences to those who didn’t make it this time.
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For blow-by-blow accounts of the convention, check out Bearing Drift [1, 2, 3] and Blueweeds. Also, AIAW was there and posted her thoughts.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
I think moving up the deadline for slate filing would make it that much worse. As is, people didn’t know enough about the process to know they could create slates, even with the late deadline. There was a group called Volunteers for Obama that passed out slate literature in caucus, but didn’t file an actual slate to get it put on the ballot. They almost certainly lost votes because of this. The vote counting would have gone faster with more slate voting, too.
On the Obama side I count 9 emails from the 150+ would-be at-large delegates, none of them slate members; one of those had also filed for DNC. Frank Leone put out an email on behalf of the DNC Unity Slate, and also had a campaign website, which I only discovered this morning.
Well, somehow the word has to get out to the people about putting together slates. I know a lot of folks didn’t understand the slate process or how to go about filing one.
As for the emails – again, I doubt that most folks realized that the delegates were on the DPVA website.
I just think this whole process was a good teaching moment, a chance to further engage the newcomers. The DPVA, with its small, relatively new staff, couldn’t do it alone. If nothing else, pointing people to the website, which contained a wealth of information, would have been extremely useful.
DPVA did a good job. However, it took a LONG time to get credentials. I heard as of Friday night the 2nd CD was not ready…eek!
Congrats on Denver!
I completely agree with you on the scheduling. I am glad I saw old friends to talk to during all the waits! I wonder if it would have helped to have more people counting?
It should have started on Friday night. I was beat by the time the caucusing began and ready for the suites. I left around 5-ish because I was tired of waiting for results. I still dont know who the Obama at-large delegates are.
I was a little confused by the people who kept interupting the chair to complain about slates or something else. That seemed to make it drag on and on and on!
Plus, not to be nitpicky, but did anyone else notice that most of the items for sale were not union? I was disappointed at all the vendors that weren’t supporting our union brothers and sisters. I only found one vendor- Tiger Eye that was union.
Most of the T-shirts were not.
I suggest you just get rid of the slates.
Lloyd Snook has a good discussion going on at Democratic Central. Some of the same complaints and suggestions that are made here are in his article, plus more.
Good to see you Vivian, and I do have a Glenn Nye photo or two for you. Lisa says hi, and we had a father’s day dinner to go to Sunday, so we left around 10:30AM from W’burg, drove to Cumberland, and then back to Richmond again for dinner!
I am worn out from being in the car, not to mention the convention.
Democratic Central
Of course, i will have a photo wrap-up later today or tonight. I took over 200 photos at the convention, not all came out good. I did get some shots that were fantastic.
Maria, do you think in retrospect that the Rules Committee was right to remove all the DNC candidate speeches from the agenda? I remember people there insisting that the extra hour wouldn’t hurt anything.
The most important actual vote result that came out of the DPVA convention was that Vivian became a certified official delegate for Clinton to Denver! … major hat/tips Vivian … on reflection of what she had to say … it was too bad our lunch conversation about grassroots democrats in Virginia politics vs. political “insiders” wasn’t recorded … I hope you write a posting about that Vivian
I had a speech prepared and think that the attendees should have heard from each person for DNC. This is an important position.
They didn’t even want us to get up there and tell our name. I think if the delegates could have heard each person speak they could have made a decision on whether to vote the slate of each person individually.
All candidates were very impressive I must say and I would have liked to hear them all.
Six people running and giving them 2 minutes each would not have extended the convention any more than it already was.
There were 13 candidates for DNC, not 6. And 2 minute speeches rarely stop after 2 minutes. It’s a pretty good bet that the whole thing would have taken 45 minutes to an hour. And given the acoustics, it’s an even better bet that relatively few delegates would have heard all the speeches anyway.
There should be better ways of getting delegates information about the candidates for all contests. DPVA could collect campaign statements from the candidates, post them on the web site, and email them to the convention delegates (well in advance of the convention itself). I also think some kind of provision could be made for letting candidates meet the delegates before the convention starts — table space outside the hall, a night-before meet and greet room, or both.
Randy,
Not realizing how painful the counting would be- you were ABSOLUTELY right about removing the speeches! IF, and a big IF the ballots could have been counted quicker- then the DNC speeches would have been a necessity.
I went with the slate because I didn’t know any of the other names. I really wanted to hear from each individual “why” they deserved to be DNC or return to DNC. I only received one email regarding DNC so I had no idea about any of the other candidates.
Perhaps next convention, we have a timekeeper that shuts off the mic if a person goes over? Or a hook to drag them off the stage? 😉
At least for a position like DNC.
I can visualize the reaction now if a “grassroots” person ran over and had the mike shut off by “insiders”. As if there aren’t enough conspiracy theories flying around.
Good point!
I don’t know if there was any good solution for Saturday.
Shawn – I’ll have to think about a post about our conversation.
As for no speeches – I think the only real answer is to try not to cram everything in one day. It’s just too much.
Elsewhere, I saw a comment about the add-on delegates. One was Renee Grisham. If memory serves, the other was Ward Armstrong.
Yeah I saw that. But one of the worst things I saw was a t-shirt with “Democrat Delegate” on it.
You noted the non-union stuff too … I did not buy anything … PDA Virginia did have a table but was giving away their materials (all union)