Results of the Party Chair Race

:hi: Acmejack! I know you're reading the board looking for some input from those of use in Fort Worth, so here's my contribution:

I don't have the exact figures; I'll leave that up to someone else to post. Anyway, a race that was anticipated to be a mere "rubber stamping" of the SDEC turned into a 4-way race AND A RUN-OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The results of the run-off between Richie & Maxey were THISCLOSE, but Glen conceded very graciously. It made for a long, tiring, but exciting day (at least in my SD where up until 30 minutes before the first vote, I had 119 votes, all going for Maxey!).

dg

I really appreciate it! I was hoping Glen would pull it off but Boyd seems to be very motivated, at least for the last couple of weeks. Hope you guys are having a great time up there!

Maxey definitely energized the delegates.I think having the race come thisclose,and seeing the smaller factions (jones) unite against them,hopefully woke the Richie crowd up.Myself-i enjoyed it.no one that was with me could remember more excitement from a party chair race.Woo-Hoo.

Calvin Guest won in (IIRC) 1976.

Ask some oldtimers about that one. It was downright vicious. However, it was very similar to this year in that there was a whole lot of young motivated liberals that made a run at "the establishment" (Guest). And, even in that year, the youngsters came up short. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This has been good for the party.

And we can thank Glen Maxey and Charlie Urbina-Jones for getting out there and fighting for the people. They gave us a choice, and they gave us a voice. The party is on notice. Glen gave what I consider to be two of the best speeches of his life. His announcement speech that had his whole base screaming "Ya Basta" at the top of our lungs (hell at least I did) and the classiest concession speech ever. Glen is a man of his word. If he says he's reporting for duty to the party, then we're right behind him. Charlie is also a great man, and someone I believe will continue to work for the party. We need millions more like him.

Of course I'm disappointed that Glen didn't win. We were very excited that the grassroots came so close to winning this. The first round of balloting had Boyd Richie at 47% which meant that Maxey, Urbina-Jones and Rogers had 53% between them. If we could hold all the non-Richie votes Glen could win. But of course things are never set in stone. The run-off balloting was late in the afternoon, and some delegates that traveled the furthest were going to have to leave. And you also had the Urbina-Jones vote splintering and not holding in total for party change. Some Jones votes switched to Richie.

To Richie I say congratulations, you won the race. I hope you keep to your promises to fix this party. To those of us on the losing side, I say never give up and never surrender. We are growing in strength and we won't quit the party. We will continue to hold the party accountable. It either performs and works with us or we're back in 2 years and we'll run at them again. No more rubber stamping! Ya Basta!

Sonia

I appreciate the commentary and the excellent detailed account. Thanks!

L-

I AM NOT A RUBBERSTAMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hee hee...did I just start something? :evilgrin:

dg

And by the way I think I heard Jim Mattox use that phrase in our SD25 caucus too. So maybe he passed by your SD and picked it up from you there and spread it.

It's gone viral now. You know how b/s is short for well b/s. Let's make rubber stamp r/s

No r/s!!

Sonia

I was the guy who called out the nominations comittee candidate who wouldnt say who she was going to nominate/

On that question. I think Marla had the nomination sewn up before then. She was a real candidate that had been working for months on her campaign. She's pretty well known in San Antonio (Bexar) even though she's from Travis. It was obvious that the other candidate was there simply to get Boyd a nomination. A lot of activists from Travis didn't even know who she was. We're never seen her working with us.

But thanks for calling her on that. And it least she was honest saying she was leaning to endorsement.

Sonia

Next convention, i'm thinking there could be a lot more elbow room around us now that it is known how loud we can get:evilgrin: ..But I bet Glen and Charlie could hear us all the way from the back of the hall where we were to up on that stage!... If they didn't Feel the Love, it was not because of our lack of volume!
We let it rip for John Courage and David and Hank as well!
We got us some great candidates! Here's hoping Barbara Ann kicks Kay Bailey's behind back to North Texas! VaLinda Hathcox Rocks!

Texas NEEDS these folks in office! Let's work our butts off to get them there!

AND NOW HE HAS TO KEEP THEM! Or the old guard will be old news in about two years.

It was great seeing old DU friends and great meeting new ones.

I forgot to mention you on that other thread because I could only remember your real name. WatchWhatISay is a long time DUer now coming back to hang with us.

Please keep coming back and it was great to see you! :hi:

Sonia

You always make everyone feel welcome, like a sista! Is that what the S stands for? SoniaSista? I had such a great time in Fort Worth, would have liked to have stayed for a week. Found out this morning that Marcia Ball is playing at 8.0 today. Unfortunately I'm back in The Woodlands.

But I was proud of my county. Out of 22 delegates, we voted 12 for Maxey and 5 for Urbina-Jones. And we brought some young new kids as delegates too. We have a new county chair, Wendy Melton, whose daughter Connie is 18 and just graduated, but was on the Resolutions committee and took part in the vote counting process.

The S is actually the first letter of the last name. But I can be your sister too.

I am proud of our delegates too. So many people are stepping up and running and getting involved in campaigns and are new precinct chairs. There is a whole lot of movement and life on the front lines.

That one conclusion that stands out for me in the PPC survey


We fight on. You will not deter us, you will not discourage us, you will not control us. We will win eventually because we keep fighting for what is right.

Sonia

I believe that Glen Maxey won a majority of votes on the second ballot from Delegates who were actually, present, and only lost the race because of the apportionment system - so YES, this sends a strong message to the state party indeed that they had better build long-term infrastructure to help organizers across this state, and fast.

We desperately need training, equipment, online tools for voter communication, and other resources in every single county, available to every single activist - and quickly. The new TDP online voterfile sounded like a nice start, but just barely - it needs much more depth in the amount of voter history available for targeting purposes (such as local/municipal election history, for example).

based on what someone said at the Drunks Caucus last night. There are a lot of counties out there (mine included) which have tons of votes (ie, Webb with 119) but send only one or two delegates (ex. Webb County sent 7). What the Richie people did was send what I call "ringers", 1 or 2 per county, who could then vote delegation strength for Richie. In the case of Webb County, I know that most of my delegation had to catch the 1 pm flight back to Laredo, so they weren't going to be on the floor. When I got out of Tabulations & went to my delegation, I WAS THE ONLY DELEGATE FROM WEBB COUNTY PRESENT UNTIL 30 MINUTES BEFORE THE VOTE! 119 VOTES FOR MAXEY, 46% OF THE VOTES IN SD21! Richard Raymond & his assistant (who split the Webb County caucus so that some guy from a county so weak it only had 2 delegates became our Committee Man! :grr: ) showed up to "save the day" for Richie. They had the balls to ask me to "unite." Hell no! I AM NOT A RUBBER STAMP, especially after the bullshit from the night before. You dare ask me to unite the Webb County vote after that crap??????? :nuke: "Didn't you vote for Richard?" asked the aide. "Yes, I did, but again, I'm not a rubber stamp. This is a democracy & we vote!"

I got on the horn & called the other 2 delegates who had come to the convention center to say farewell. Fortunately, they were still in Fort Worth. I begged them to come back because the vote in Webb was going to be 2/1 in favor of Richie. They did not make it back in time for the first vote, but they were there for the 2nd round, so we turned the tables & it was 3/2 Maxey. Still not enough, but if phone calls had not been made & the Webb, Zapata, Starr, & Duval ringers not been brought back to vote Richie, Maxey might have carried the day.

Point being after this long-winded explanation: To keep this from happening again, we need to get out organization skills & workshops to the smaller counties that don't send anyone. We did it in Webb County in 2004. I'm going home to work my precinct & hopefully get my two very pissed off friends to continue to work Webb County as well. We need to get more delegates from these small counties so that the county bosses aren't the ones casting delegation strength, but the delegates themselves.

I hope this makes sense. I'm still kind of brain-dead. :dunce:

dg

I know exactly what you meant. Of course we've been dealing with the whole apportionment thing the whole weekend. We knew the runoff vote was going to be crucial and if the voting delegates did not stay to vote their choice that it would be lost.

I agree that knowledge and training are more skills we need to acquire. We learned a lot at this convention. I'm still proud at what we were able to do. And I am also disappointed at those that would intimidate others to switch their votes against what they wanted to do in their hearts. And I'm disappointed that we saw ballot stuffing in the endorsement caucuses and the Robert's Rules of Order not being followed when a recorded vote was called in that same caucus.

I still want to know what happened in that RGV district where the entire delegation that had been almost solid Urbina-Jones but where Maxey had good support too, then switched entirely to Richie. That sounds like one of those "unity ploys" too.

Thanks for holding your ground with the Raymond crew DG!

Sonia

With maps! And a possible explanation on what happened in SD19 which had been Richie's worst performing SD, then giving him a good showing in the runoff.

http://www.burntorangereport.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1054

Sonia

I had no idea that kind of strategy went on, but I should have known after seeing what went on at the PPC caucus. I knew something was up once I saw that "lady in red" and all the suits hanging out before it got started. But really, it was just an endorsement. Though it sort of feels like PPC has been sullied.

It was great to meet you, but too bad I didnt really get to know you more.

Hell WatchWhatISay, I'm going to name her. She can be named - Molly Beth Malcolm. That's right folks, our former TX party chair was working for Boyd. That should be no surprise.

Let's just hope that Boyd has enough sense not to take any advice from her on how to win elections. In fact I really hope Molly Beth doesn't go anywhere near that State Party office now that Boyd was won.

Sonia

Two years ago PPC asked her to step down, now she's doing a takeover. Shame on me for getting out of the loop. I don't really know if I want to know how this happened.

"I am not a rubber stamp!" :rofl:

and texas thought criminal too. But just as with Wolverine, I left shortly after you guys came. We had been there for a few hours at that point and my friend, Bonnie wanted to go see what City Streets was about - though I have no idea why.

But I'll be seeing you all plenty in the future.

Are 'ringers' duly elected delegates who support Richie? If so, then Richie organized his supporters and Richie supporters were motivated to go through the entire delegation process to attend the convention and stay and vote.

What's wrong with that, i.e. being organized and motivated? Or are you saying the Richie delegates were somehow illegal? Or are you saying Richie supporters don't deserve to be delegates?

Why the perjorative term 'ringers'?

If a county does not report, their allotted votes go into a pool that's divvied up between those that do report. If a county doesn't send a full contingent, they still vote delegation strength & each delegate gets an equal number of votes. So, depending upon how many Webb delegates were on the floor, a vote was either worth 119 (1), 39 (3) or 23.8 (5).

dg

Sonias reply about stuffing the PPC makes sense in terms of the use of the word ringer. I still don't get it with respect to a particular delegation.

Here's the deal from my perspective. The rules say that a senatorial district gets x amount of votes no matter how many delegates show up. If Boyd got his folks out, but Glen did not or conversely if Richie supporters were motivated but Maxey supporters were not, how does that make a creditaled delegate a ringer?

Now, people who aren't really PPC people showing up for a PPC event are ringers. But delegates showing up for their senatorial district - how are they ringers?

but here are my thoughts on this.... Consider the case of people who have zero Democratic Party involvement during the year, and who did not show up for their precinct or county conventions (but were put on the list by someone else). Yes, they may be legitimately credentialed delegates, but their sole connection to the party is that someone has asked them to come and fill a seat. They are not particularly interested in the Democratic party, they have no independent thoughts in their head, etc. In short, the participation of that person is solely as a vote-multiplier for the person who asked them to come.

In a philosophical sense, is that person's contribution to the party equal to that of the hardworking delegate who shows up to club meetings, contributes, and participates? I would say no.

There's no doubt that this is allowed by party rules... but it doesn't pass the "smell test" for me.



Maybe "ringer" isn't the right word... how about "benchwarmer?" :evilgrin:

(dot) com.

dg

From my personal experience. A ringer would be those 50-75 Boyd Richie delegates (so yes they have delegation credentials) who joined the PPC caucus on Friday to get their voting credentials and stuffed the vote in that caucus. I don't know the exact number because I'm not the membership chair. I was working the line and I saw them all lined up at the membership table with their Boyd Richie stickers.

This line of suits included one Molly Beth Malcolm who I believe is as progressive as Tom DeLay's ass. I never expect to see any of these "new PPC members" at any of our future PPC quarterly meetings. They were there for one purpose only, to fix the endorsement vote for Boyd. As soon as they got their desired result they almost got up in mass and left the room. The business of the PPC is no real concern for them. Shortly after they left the room, a quorum of the membership (which now included the ringers) was not present and the meeting was adjourned.

I made a motion that would essentially have meant no endorsement from the caucus i.e. let the delegates decide on the floor. The race was already being too divisive to these caucuses. My motion to table the steering committee recommendation failed (some say by two votes). The motion to endorse Richie then passed although a call for a recorded vote was ignored by the caucus chair.

Those ringers have essentially invalidated the PPC or at least its reputation. By any means necessary.

And I do use the term "ringers" pejoratively here. I had quite a few people speak to me about Maxey's supporters potentially stuffing the ballot box at our annual meeting and honestly there was nothing of the sort happening in Austin. The few new members that joined are progressives. Now whether they keep coming back to PPC meetings after seeing how the PPC got used in Ft. Worth, is another question.

Sonia

I don't get the use of the term 'ringers' for the delegates themselves. Who spends the time and the money to go to the convention just to be a bench warmer? Why would a bench warmer care who was TDP chair? Who can say what Democratic meetings they attend or if they went to their precinct convention? Molly Beth Malcomb isn't a bench warmer - at least she has been involved. (I wish she WAS a bench warmer, by the way.]

I'm just objecting to the use of a perjorative term used against people who attended the convention and stayed around to vote.

The biggest Richie supporter that I know in my delegation, SD 20, is a tireless worker who has spent hour after hour working for the party. She's elderly. I wonder if you called her a bench warmer. Or made fun of her age as some of the Maxey supporters have in the blogs.

I just don't buy that Richie got a bunch of lay abouts who don't care about politics to go to the convention and stay to the bitter end to vote for him.

It appears that the Richie folks planned out their strategy and were organized while their delegates were determined to stay the course.

But he did use every advantage. Things such as having the vote go late in the day which was going to wipe Charlie's Valley support, having knowledge ahead of time of who was likely to leave or not show up and then get delegates who could sop up those allotments for Boyd. (example of Richard Raymond and aid who tried to get DG to roll over)There were 30 plus counties that he knew were not going to show up. I would love to see a Richie correlation for how those votes were alloted...

If you were paying attention you could see on the floor that there were significantly more Maxey supporters in attendance than any other block. Boyd signs were significant in empty seats. Richie played the allotment game and played it well..but it does leave some of us with a bad taste in our mouths.

Yes, I voted my conscience and supported Charlie first round. (I believe we need more minorities in leadership positions and if I don't vote for the qualified ones that come up I don't know how I can expect them to get there.)
I know that had Charlie had the lead Glen would have done his best to support him. Glen is a Class act and I was rooting for him. (Sonia and I screamed for both Maxey and Richie and wore stickers for both.) The way Richie got in was effective but class is not a word that comes to mind describing his process.

Still, we are where we are.. and Glen and Charlie are gonna work their butts off to get us the elected officials we need. Hopefully, Boyd will have gained some respect for them and what the likely majority of us really want and together we can make a more Democratic Texas a reality. From my lips to G~d's ears...

but ask Wolvie about the people who showed up from her county who she'd never met before, (and it's not like she's from a major urban area there) and who were only in attendance on the floor for the crucial votes... :shrug:

Honestly, there are so many stories going around, but we saw none of this up in our nosebleed section. Not even a whisper of it that I know of. And, you would think I would have noticed because I was the head of our tabulations team, so I was front and center during the whole voting process from beginning to end!

It was a spirited chair race, it was good for the party, and I support the elected party members and candidates 99.9%, including Boyd Richie. (My neighboring DUer can tell you about the 0.1% represented by a local candidate. :P )

But did anyone else notice in Richie's nomination speech when he mentioned his wife, that we would get a team, "a man and a woman..."? Sounds remarkably close to the "one man, one woman" tagline we keep hearing on certain constitutional amendments. I wonder if it was "code" to the delegates, to let us know that he was married. To a woman.:grr:

Oh my stars, "we can't elect a gay man to State party chair!" Uh, why the hell not? When did this party become the party of exclusion and homophobia?

I think the Urbina-Jones comment about "pedejadas" was exactly meant to address that.

Sonia

anything is possible. The result from that SD was definitely the :wow: moment of the convention.

dg

Richie and his wife are obviously a team. They've made that very obvious all along. I'd leave it at that.

I voted for Jones. My reason, he spoke to my heart, so that's why he got my support. I think we needed someone who could bring in more of the Latinos voters and other people as well, which he mentioned other citizens such as the Asian communities. I didn't hear anyone else speaking about bringing more diversity to the party.

Did I miss that part of the speech by Richie, or Maxey?

Also considering we could use more diversity at the top of the TDP. I know that Jones will continue to hunt down voters who may not interested in voting. He pledged to bring in more diverse groups to join the TDP. I believe him and his commitment to do just that.

I hope my fellow DUers here will understand why I voted my conscious.;-)

Another thing I noticed was where the BIG money was being spent. Richie with his signs, printed on both sides, and in color no less, and heavy card stock. That print job didn't come cheap, which I know something about since I worked in the print industry....

Maxey had less appeal, with his signs being printed on regular 20 lb. stock paper. Although he had several signs with different messages. My favorite being "Ya Basta"....

I didn't see any placards for Jones or the other candidate (sorry I can't remember her name)

I was the only one on my row to vote for Jones. On the second go round, I voted for Maxey. Again I was the only one on my row to vote for Maxey.

I think all the candidates will continue to work for the party which is the important thing in the long run to winning the state back from the grips of the Repubs.

This was my first convention, and I enjoyed participating in democracy!

We had several in our SD that voted for Charlie first round too. MelissaG being one of them. I certainly love Charlie too, but I wanted to make sure Glen made the runoff. You voted who you thought would do the best job and I think the Latino vote is extremely important too. Way to be brave holding up your voting card on your row in a sea of very little support.

You must have missed the "out of the bushes and into the future" banners for Lakesha Rogers. She had at least two of them. Very nice graphics, plus the barber shop quartet singing that song with that same reference to out of the bushes and into the future was creative.

Sonia

You vote for the person you feel will be the best one for the job at hand. Many of us feel strongly that that person was Maxey. You feel it was Urbina-Jones. A few thought it was Rogers, and bless her LaRouchian heart, she had some very wonderful, valid points to make. The majority, however, felt otherwise. I have problems with how that majority was won (for the record, I really get in a tizzy when Republicans do this crap too, so don't think I'm just harping on Richie because Maxey lost), but I'm a big girl & have bigger fish to fry at this point.

As for me, I'm home & going to work my precinct. Am I pissed off at what happened in my SD? Yes. Am I a bit depressed that Maxey lost & how? Yes. But quitting because I'm pissed & depressed is only going to make it easier for the Republicans to continue screwing around with this state & country & that is NOT acceptable to me! As David Van Os says: Fight 'em till Hell freezes over, then fight 'em on the ice!"

Excuse me while I strap on my skates & grab my hockey stick. Politics in Texas is a full-contact sport & the coach is putting me in the game.

dg

I voted Richie and I was irritated by some of the Maxey tactics, so it works both ways. It really depends on which side you were on as to what you were seeing, I guess.

I got a little tired of Maxey supporters getting in my face acting like I wasn't "progressive" or that I was "old school" because I was supporting Richie. I had a couple of encounters that were not fun at all. That whole thing got VERY tiresome for me.

was the early resignation of Soechting so the SDEC could appoint Richie... which I heard about MONTHS before it occurred... and they used, used, used that advantage to the max. And that was not the attitude of any one individual supporter there, that was the official campaign.

Well, like Texas Thought Criminal said elsewhere, if they pull this level of organization together in the fall, it'll be good for us. On to November!