On Sunday afternoon several hundred elected delegates and alternates to the 2012 Democratic National Committee Convention gathered in a meeting room at the Sacramento Convention Center for the Statewide Delegation Meeting to select At-large and PLEO delegates and the remainder of the delegation. The meeting was a mandatory obligation for the delegation members selected in the April 29th statewide Congressional district caucuses.
For those who had never been to a Presidential Nominating Convention the meeting provided the opportunity to find out more details about what happens at the convention, what to plan for, and learn from convention veterans what it’s really like to be a delegate. For some veterans, the meeting seemed to be a waste of time and money for delegates.
State Senate candidate Steve Young was one of those who was miffed at the purpose. “Requiring delegates to come to Sacramento for an hour’s worth of actual business is a burden,” Young said.
Young raises a good point. The only official reason for the delegates to be there was to confirm that selection of the additional delegation members not chosen in April. the mandatory nature of the meeting is because a quorum of the delegates was necessary to accomplish that approval.
California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton convened the delegation and got right down to business. At times, Burton was a bit ahead of the delegates and had to deal with objections from members who did not have the lists of delegation members in front of them at the time they voted. The lists were handed out at the time of each vote, and distribution of paper lists to the assembly took a few minutes.
Many of the delegation did not have a problem with having to attend the meeting. Heide Krueger, Theodore Perle, and Thomas Phifer, delegates from the 45th Congressional district, left Laguna Woods at 4 a.m. Sunday by car to be at the meeting. Kruger, Historian with the Laguna Woods Democratic Club, will be attending her fourth convention in September. “I moved to the United States from Germany in 1961, and voted for Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Being a delegate is an important part of my participation in democracy,” Kruger told me.
In addition to the required business, the meeting allowed delegations from across the state to meet and get to know each other, while also learning about the hotel options, transportation challenges, and other activities to expect in addition to the evening convention activities on September 3-6 in Charlotte.
Rancho Santiago Community College District Trustee John Hanna, also a 45th Congressional level delegate, reflected on his experience when he first became a delegate in 1992. “It would have been helpful for me to have had this opportunity for my first convention,” Hanna said. “Though it’s a burden for some to travel to these meetings, the information you get, particularly from experienced delegates, is worth it.”
I plan to cover the 2012 Democratic National Committee Convention and follow some of the Orange County delegation members while they are at the convention in September as part of the documentary project 99Voices.
For more information, and to support 99Voices—A Multimedia Documentary, visit our Kickstarter funding page HERE.
75 Fun Things to do in Charlotte, NC – from Tripadvisor.com
The no. 1 fun thing to do in Charlotte:
The Billy Graham Library
Have a blast in Charlotte! You all must be excited to learn what those other 74 fun things to to in Charlotte are – I don’t want to hold that back from you dem fun seekers, so here is the website:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attractions-g49022-Activities-Charlotte_North_Carolina.html
California Democrats prepare for the 2012 Convention. Hoping to spread their failure at the state level to the rest of the country.
The liberal Californian’s should get an education in the land of “Separate but Equal” And being just down the street from RJ Reynolds, the cigarettes are cheap there compared to tax happy California.
Actually Charlotte is a big comsopolitan city and has large ppckets of blue. More rural parts of the state are red/ The Research Triangle is pretty blue too.
Mike — if you want to see failure, look in the mirror; California Republicans continue to decline on a mass scale. Democratic party registration is still growing.
Tea Parties are for little girls with imaginary friends
Democratic party registration grows one illegal alien at a time or some other have not moving to California for all the free stuff.
Republicans otherwise known as the ones paying all the bills are leaving for more friendly states.
I agree, who wants a Tea Party when you can be part of the 99% who want everything given to them. Why work for a living when you can sponge off someone else.
Ancient Chinese Proverb: Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
2012 Democratic take: Give a man a welfare check, a free cell phone with unlimited free minutes, cash for his clunker, food stamps, section 8 housing, free contraceptives, Medicaid, a hundred weeks of unemployment, a forty ounce malt liquor, free drugs and Air Jordan shoes, and he will vote Democratic for life.