The New Castle County Democratic Convention
Well. That was quite the morning. Let me just say that I might be an unreliable narrator here, since I was there as a participant.
And, yes, I won’t bury one of the ledes: I did shout at the Speaker of the House. We’ll get to that.
Today’s convention was scheduled to approve proposed rules changes (nothing there engendered controversy), and to elect officers for Chair, First Vice-Chair, Second Vice-Chair, Secretary and Treasurer
Both Italo Carrieri-Russo and Aja Ajavon recently announced that they would run for Chair and First Vice-Chair respectively. The County Party had announced a slate comprising of Kat Caudle (incumbent) for Chair; Chris Haas, First-Vice Chair; Josh Whittaker, Second Vice-Chair; Maddie Campbell, Treasurer; Joe Daigle, Secretary.
The Call To Convention was sent out 30 days prior to the election.
Those are the facts. What follows is opinion and my take on what happened.
First, here’s my opinion. The announced candidates should have had the chance to speak. Especially since Kat’s welcoming remarks could clearly be construed as a campaign speech. That policy must change going forward.
However, if you’re running for office, you really should run. Like Evelyn Brady is running for State Chair. Attend committee meetings, reach out to the voters (committee members), even hand out lit at the convention. None of the candidates chose to do this. (Well, Kat was at one of our recent committee meetings, but in her role as Chair, not as a candidate.)
I tried to find out why Italo, as challenger, did none of this. The answer as best as I could piece together, was that he instead chose to play the inside game–and to hope for a small turnout so that his folks could win. The strategy didn’t work.
We had gotten nothing until about three days before the election, which is when Italo and Aja sent something out to announce their candidacies to our committee officers. We immediately shared it with all of our members. Next day, we got the report of the Rules Committee. We immediately sent it out to our members. The next day, we got the announcement of the candidacies of the proposed Party slate. We immediately sent it out to our members. It is safe to say that not every committee followed the same protocol.
However, it was up to the candidates to reach out. They had thirty days. They did not.
Following the election of first Vice-Chair and during ballot distribution for Second Vice-Chair, the controversy boiled over. Specifically that the process was unfair, that the candidates should have been allowed to speak. It then degenerated into demands that the convention be halted, rescheduled and/or a couple of other things. I am counting on others to both fill in gaps and to call me out when I’ve mischaracterized something. It was at this point that Speaker Minor-Brown grabbed the mic and said that the process was unfair, and argued that we can’t have this kind of division within the Democratic Party. At which point my temper (my Kryptonite) got the better of me, especially as I’d been stewing about her performance during the debate on the Musk-pass Bill. I didn’t drop an f-bomb (first time for everything), but I said something like ‘YOU were the one who gaveled down your own caucus members in order to pass that Musk bill’. In other words, as a former contributor here used to say, “Pot, Meet Kettle”. (We actually had a pretty decent talk afterwards. After all, she’s still better than Val Longhurst.)
Anyway, a large group of attendees demanded that we suspend the meeting at that point. The Parliamentarian pointed out that, were we to do so, the votes we had already taken were still valid and part of the record. Meaning, we in theory would have had to return at some point to vote on the Secretary and Treasurer. No way we could ever get a quorum for that. So cooler heads prevailed, the motion to suspend was defeated, and we finished our business.
Anyway, that’s my perspective. Isn’t it Rashomon where everybody has their own perspective on an event? Yep. As in:
The witnesses’ unreliability and subjectivity are a result of situational, social and cultural differences. The term “Rashomon Effect” was coined after iconic filmmaker Akira Kurosawa first utilized the storytelling technique in the film Rashomon (1950).
Which is precisely why others’ perspectives will likely be far different from mine. If you were there, what was yours?
Heard Mimi brown had a hissy fit and started screaming at people…..which is apparently not uncommon.
Just because people didn’t follow the rules doesn’t mean you get to make up your own rules the way you want them.
As El Som pointed out Mimi getting mad at people for gaveling people down is quite the hoot.
Not to mention, she was out of order, and had her mic shut off.
Honestly, though, we calmed down and talked after the convention.
Besides, if she was out of order, I was out of order.
Forgot to mention, the officers elected today:
Kat Caudle, Chair
Chris Haas, First Vice-Chair
Terrell Williams, Second Vice Chair. He was the beneficiary of the backlash, and defeated Josh Whittaker. All I can say is he’d better work five times harder than he has on his own campaigns in order to be a plus for the committee.
Treasurer: Maddie Campbell
Secretary: Joe Daigle
You pretty much nailed it.
I didn’t realize that Kat’s welcoming remarks wasn’t her pitch for votes (I voted for her). Maybe in hindsight she regrets not offering the mic to Italo to say a few words. That said, all the candidates for party offices should learn from Evelyn Brady.
Italo was First Vice Chair, seems safe to assume he could have sat on stage with them and helped run the event? Was glad to see Evelyn there, did not get to get her view on things though.
Seemed pretty strange to me to decry division during the process of a leadership contest, especially because the speech felt like it wasn’t exactly intended to smooth frayed nerves .
Anyway, my congrats to all the winners of the election today. I look forward to what they plan is to grow the party and make New Castle County blue in every direction.
There is no circumstance under which Italo speaking would have actually helped him get votes
So why the support for him?
Was it just an anti-incumbent vote?
This was a confusing event. I feel bad for most people, this is all volunteer work and despite everything it seems like they tried their best — we all know the state party wasn’t being any help to them (includes all the attendees…)
Also candidate’s picking and choosing who they let know ahead of time about their interest instead of all of them just using the list from the state party was weird and left people out, but how do you require that everyone only use one email group?
The State Party being there, and seemingly doing nothing but count votes? Did Betsey not step in at the last convention when dozens of people were arguing about vice chair nominations because of gender identity? I think she did.
I saw two (as far as I know ) prospective State Chairs in the building. Interested in how they viewed this.
What was the count between Williams and Whitaker? I was really hoping Whitaker would win.
51 Williams 43 Whittaker.
I had video of that particular exchange, and what you said was:
“It was the same thing you did to the representatives on that Musk bill. You told them to shut up. You told them they were out of order. So here you are up here [inaudible] all this outrage …. [Mimi said something, Kat talking over both of you] yes, you did!”
For the event, I think a few things were true:
– A lot of people are feeling scared and fragile due to national level politics, and this was one area they felt like they could have a say. Which led to a lot of people grabbing the mic out of order, and generally being more heated than usual. This fragility also led to several people looking to someone or something to blame, and there were a few missteps by the committee in handling this process that made the people running the meeting an easy target.
– I don’t know why Frank Cooke was so concerned about the meeting start being delayed by 15 minutes so we could reach quorum. That was a perfectly reasonable decision for the parliamentarian to make IMO.
– A lot of people don’t understand the role of the parliamentarian. (Seems like Cooke was one of those people; several people who grabbed the mic also did not understand the parliamentarian’s role.)
– It seemed like Mimi is used to being in charge as Speaker, so she tried to control the meeting. However, state electeds are separate from the party business managers, and they shouldn’t have power in that arena. This line was blurred.
– Kat really doesn’t know how to deescalate. Sigh.
– Well, I guess none of our electeds that took the mic know how to deescalate either.
– People who were nominated should have had 1-2 minutes to say who they were.
– Like you said, people who were running should have, well, RUN before that day. If you won’t put in the work to run for an office, I don’t trust you to put in the work to do the office.
– Bless the parliamentarians for trying to gracefully handle the anger directed at that stage, and for reminding people that the Rules Committee is open and they really really want participation.
Hopefully in future, the committee will start meetings like this by going over the procedures. And I agree that those who are nominated should be able to introduce themselves with a few sentences.
Following Cooke’s, pardon the expression, logic, they should have locked the doors promptly at 9, this ensuring that a quorum would not be present, and that they’d have to reschedule the convention.
Gotta say, in a battle to the bottom, Cooke could well be the bottom-feeder.
It was a truly bizarre conclusion to reach