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?