The Texas Observer

All over the state tomorrow, Democrats will gather for state senatorial district conventions. Here is an “unofficial” list from the state Democratic party of their locations.

This is the second stage in a three-tier process to determine the distribution of 67 delegates. Here’s a refresher on the process. On caucus night as many as a million Democrats participated in Texas. Here are unofficial results from the caucus by senatorial district.

Winnowing down a million to 67 is akin to shoving a donkey through a garden hose. The March 4 caucuses weren’t always pretty and tomorrow promises more potential for ugliness.

After asking and being refused a delay in the conventions, the Clinton campaign assured reporters that they would not be conducting systematic challenges to delegates. Not so much. Daily Kos reports that they are systematically challenging Obama delegates, particularly in Dallas. The Clinton campaign is saying they are just helping their partisans.

More than likely, rather than top-down shenanigans from the campaigns, we will witness more of the run-of-the-mill disorganization and individual bias that has marked this process so far. Our crack team of Observer reporters will be giving you the blow-by-blow from a number of locations tomorrow.

Here’s a taste to get you started:

Tarrant County

In Tarrant County, party officials are trying to work through numerous logistical entanglements before tomorrow’s county and senate district conventions. The biggest problem is that the Senate District 10 convention in Fort Worth has way too many delegates signed up to attend – as in 800 too many. The district is allocated roughly 3,700 delegates. But somehow on election night, the caucuses in Fort Worth named nearly 4,500 delegates. Many precincts just named too many delegates. That means 800 folks can’t get seated at tomorrow’s convention. The credentials committee has been meeting on Friday to figure out how to resolve the problem by tomorrow morning. The two main proposals are allowing the disputed precincts to re-caucus tomorrow morning. Or the credentials committee can simply cull through the delegate list to pick the folks who can get seated. Either way, it doesn’t sound like a fun Friday night for the volunteers on the credentials committee.

Bexar County

Angie Garcia, temporary chair of the Democratic Bexar County convention in Senate District 26, said that there will be a few challenges to delegates at her convention but she couldn’t name how many. “Mostly the challenges will be based on procedure – that something wasn’t done right during the caucus,” she says. “We are pretty clear on the delegates though. We are going to have the delegates for Hillary.”

Garcia said the credentials committee will meet tomorrow starting around 8:30 and will sort out any challenges that have already been presented or that come up during the sign in process. Garcia cited a precinct on the west side of San Antonio that turned in its delegate counts for Obama but not for Clinton. “The Clinton people were there but they met in a separate location and now nobody can find the Clinton list,” says Garcia. “ Obviously we will have to figure that out at the convention. We may have to have a mini caucus.”

Ian Straus, temporary chair of the convention in Senate District 25 in San Antonio says he expects at least 2,000 people to show up. “In previous conventions I chaired we had 50 people and in the last one 30 people,” he says. “We’ve never had anything like what we are expecting tomorrow.”

Straus says there will be some contested delegates and that the credentials committee has already started meeting on those delegates. “They won’t adjudicate until tomorrow, however,” he says.

Straus says his main fear is that people will lose their patience with the process which could take all day. “I don’t want people to think they can drive up at 1:45 p.m. then sign in and participate,” he says. “First of all there is nowhere to park. The building was built before there were cars. That’s why I am encouraging people to get here early,” Straus says.

On the positive side, he says the convention is better organized than in previous years. “We are going to have 10 times the people we are used to so we started early,” he says. “Now we really need to look ahead and try to keep some of these people who come to the convention involved in the Democratic process. We really need to take the state back from the Republicans,” says Straus. “For me it’s going to be a very exciting event.”

If you plan on going to any of the conventions check the Bexar County Democratic Web site for any last minute changes.

Harris County

The folks over at the Harris County Democratic Party have been working overtime the past few days. They don’t have a full grasp of the challenges to delegates so far. This is what they told us:

SD 4: No challenges but about 20 people were removed for non-qualification.

SD 7: Had fewer than 20 challenges.

SD 11: Had about 8.

SD 15: Had 40.

SD 17: Had fewer than 20.

Information is still missing on two important districts: SD 13 (Sen. Rodney Ellis’ delegate-rich district) and SD 6 (where Clinton got closest to Obama on election night in Harris County).

by Jake Bernstein

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 7:57 pm and is filed under Elections, Hillary, Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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