BlueBloggin

Yesterday was an amazing experience at the Bastrop County Convention, Senatorial District 18 (SD18) and a great to be a democrat in Texas. I was actually surprised at the organization, participation and enthusiasm. Everything was handled efficiently, all rules were followed and every single delegate knew what they were doing and what was expected of them.

Keeping 378 Delegates and 275 Alternates under control is like herding cats, but our county leaders kept the convention under control and moving along smoothly. I believe this success is the result of our leadership, county chair Mitzi VanSant, the hard work of the committee members and of course the delegate chairs.

• This year Bastrop County Democrats moved the county convention to the Bastrop Intermediate School. They set up canopies for the overflow crowd and they even went so far as to tell some people to bring their own chairs. Party leaders expect up to 1,000 people at Saturday’s convention.

The March 4th caucus numbers for my county were Clinton 41.26% and Obama 58.73% . I expected the Clinton campaign would make every effort to try and up their numbers at the county convention however, just the opposite happened. Some delegates for Hillary didn’t show up nor did some precinct delegation chairs; this probable affected their strategy at the convention. However, I was very pleased that some Hillary delegates changed over to Obama.

The final count for our county was Clinton 13 delegates (32%) and Obama 19 delegates (68%) for a total of 32 delegates from Bastrop County going to the State Convention in June.

How can a candidate loose delegates? Our caucus system is a three step process, the precinct caucus which was held March 4th after the polls closed, the Senate District/County Conventions which where held around the state on March 29 and then the State Convention in June. With that said a candidate can lose delegates:

• A presidential campaign which fails to stay organized and doesn’t get its delegates to the next ascending level will lose delegates to the campaign which does. This has the potential to change the numbers of national delegates from Texas for each candidate as the process plays out.

According to the Houston Chronicle, Senate District 6 in Houston, 40 precincts that Hillary won on March 4 didn’t even show up to their convention. How does that happen? It could be the dismissive behavior of the Clinton campaign towards caucuses, lack of training for their delegates or most likely as stated above lack of organization.

• At the Senate District 6 convention, an area of heavy Clinton support, there were more than 40 precincts who had no delegates show up for the convention.

• Clinton received about 64 percent of the popular vote in the Senate District 6 in the March 4 primary, but only 55 percent of the delegates attending Saturday’s convention backed her.

• At the Senate District 13 convention at Texas Southern University in Houston, an Obama stronghold, Clinton supporters unsuccessfully tried to gain delegate strength by asking Obama backers to switch so they would be elected as delegates to the state convention. Obama came out of the convention with 272 state delegates to Clinton’s 69.

Despite the hassles Saturday, many Democrats said the turnout excited them about their prospects of breaking the Republican political hold on Texas.

Filed under: Bastrop County Convention, Democrat, Politics, Texas, Texas Democratic Party, Texas Politics, delegates