Mass Confusion at Fort Worth Convention
March 29th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Things aren’t exactly running smoothly at today’s convention for Democratic delegates in Tarrant County’s Senate District 10.
The convention is being held in the rodeo arena at the Will Rogers Coliseum in downtown Fort Worth. Nearly 4,000 Democrats have piled into the stands rimming the dirt rodeo floor. The setting seems rather appropriate: party officials and convention volunteers — in bopping around trying to deal with a dizzying number of problems — remind one of bull riders holding on for dear life.
The convention — the second in a three-step process to select the remaining 67 delegates in the Democratic Party presidential primary-caucus hybrid — was supposed to begin at 9:30 this morning. As of 1:30, the actual convention still hadn’t started, and frustrated delegates were wedged into a narrow hallway still trying to sign in.
The breakdowns are almost too numerous to list. The first major issue was limited parking. The Will Rogers complex is also hosting a horse show and a gun show today. So Democratic delegates in Volvos with Hillary and Obama bumper stickers had to compete for parking spaces with heavy duty pickups with gun racks.
Once inside, delegates waited all morning listening to time-killing speeches while the credentials committee tried to sort through the various logistical messes and some of the delegate challenges. As we reported yesterday, Tarrant County party officials have been struggling with their delegate list all week. Senate District 10 has hundreds of delegates more than it should. The challenge was compiling an accurate list of delegates. There seems to have been major confusion about whether local officials or the state party would create the delegate list used to check people when they sign in.
County Party Chair Art Brender said the list he got from the state party was unusable — it mistakenly listed many Clinton supporters for Obama and vice-versa. After that list was tossed, local officials have been organizing on the fly. The results have been predictable: delegates unable to sign in because their names aren’t on the list or their paperwork is missing, and, for some precincts, sign-in lists disappeared and had to be redone.
In the arena’s front hallway, delegates crowded together, waiting to sign in at make-shift tables. No one seemed to know what was going on.
By mid-morning, hours after the convention was supposed to start, Brender sat at a table in the frenetic, cacophonous hallway discussing the problems, hoping the sign in would begin soon. Before he could explain to the Observer what was happening, he was told that some tables had started signing in delegates from certain precincts prematurely (and without convention credentials to hand out) and wouldn’t stop when asked. “OK,” Brender sighed and was off to deal wit that issue. Brender is retiring as county party chair in two months. On this day, that probably can’t come soon enough.
The palpable excitement among delegates this morning at the sight of such a large gathering of Democrats — perhaps the biggest in Tarrant County in decades — was soon replaced by growing anger and frustration.
In a back room on the arena’s second floor, the credentials committee members (all volunteers) dashed around, stacks of paper in hand, trying to answer questions from many first-time delegates and solve one mini-problem after another. Eventually, a make-shift table was set up in the hall outside the credential committee room to catalog complaints and challenges. Delegates soon crowded the hall and pressed against the table.
The biggest challenge was generating an accurate list of delegates so each precinct could sign in. The sign-in is the most important aspect of the convention because the percentages of Obama and Clinton supporters who sign in will determine the number of delegates each candidate sends to the state convention in June (the third and final step in the process).
The sign in finally began at 11:30 and is expected to continue for hours. Meanwhile, party leaders and elected officials pleaded with delegates not to leave. By mid-afternoon, it appeared that many were sticking it out.
Ain’t democracy grand?
“This is embarrassing,” said one frustrated Obama delegate. “This is embarrassing for Tarrant County.”
More to come…
March 29th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
FYI Dave,
Madame leading by 1 delegate, with 16.55 % reporting (per BOR/link)
http://www.burntorangereport.com/
per DU forum poster, Collin County is having their convention tomorrow due to inability to find large enough venue (unconfirmed)
March 29th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
[…] « Mass Confusion at Fort Worth Convention […]