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At the Kansas 3rd District Democratic Convention

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Several weeks ago, I attended the Kansas Caucuses and was elected to be a delegate to the 3rd District Convention, which was this last Saturday. This is where the other delegates from our congressional district get together and decide who will represent us at the National Democratic Convention, which is held in Denver this year, in August.

It’s another election, really. The people who won at the Caucuses can now campaign to become a National Delegate. They don’t have to, but most do. It’s a pretty big deal.

The 3rd District, which serves Johnson, Wyandotte, and Douglas counties, gets to send five people --- two men and three women— to the National Convention as Obama delegates. I think Hillary’s group got to send three people. The proportion is based on the percentage of the popular vote in the Caucuses. Kansas tries to send the same number of women and men, so I assume another district somewhere is sending three men and two women for Obama.

Usually, there’s not much drama at the National Convention. There is rarely a surprise because the nominee has it all wrapped up by then. John McCain, for example, clinched the Republican nomination weeks ago. However, the Hillary/Obama fight might not be resolved by then and no one knows exactly what might happen. Delegates get to vote for whom they support and they may end up deciding the outcome. These delegates have the same voting power as one of the SuperDelegates you may have heard so much about, except they’re pledged to vote for a particular candidate in the first round of voting. After that, anything is possible.

The Campaign

I filed my paperwork with the state party six weeks ago. That got my name on the ballot. I promptly began work designing my really cool Obama buttons with “Sean Tevis for National Delegate” on them.

Then came the letters. The first one came about four weeks ago. Another came a week later. The trickle became a flood and last week I was getting about five letters a day, and that doesn’t even include the e-mails. These were all other people running for National Delegate introducing themselves and making their case why they’d be an excellent choice.

I got phone calls, too. A high school teacher, a former journalist, a tech guy in Lawrence, an 18-year-old kid from Baldwin, and others all called me. They would introduce themselves and we’d chat for a bit and I learned that there were 78 people running against me. I was becoming overwhelmed and they were, too. No one I talked to had any real idea of what criteria they should use to pick from this huge field of candidates.

I stepped up my own campaign efforts. I sent a nicely designed e-mail newsletter to every delegate hoping to stand out from the crowd. My strategy was that everyone would have a favorite candidate, but I wanted to be their second choice. It seemed to me that when everyone is roughly the same you’d want someone who would complement your first choice rather than duplicate them. I also gave them a list of criteria I would use to judge candidates and then neatly inserted myself into them.

The Convention

The Convention was held at Mill Valley High School in Shawnee. Registration began at 1 p.m. and the event began at 2 p.m. sharp. Due to an error in Google Maps’ driving directions, I didn’t show up until 1:50 p.m.—missing out on valuable campaign time. I arrived deeply frustrated and anxious and sat in the middle of the auditorium between the Clinton and Obama sides trying to chat up people as the District Chair called the convention to order. We heard from Senatorial candidate Jim Slattery who gave a confident speech about how we need to rally to defeat Senator Pat Roberts this fall.

The Hillary supporters then located to another room since we’re electing delegates based on whom they support. Obama people vote for Obama candidates, so listening to Hillary candidates would have been pointless.

Then came the speeches. Everyone had three minutes to address the audience. If you do the math, that’s close to four hours of speeches. The men went first, then the women, and all alphabetically. That put me (a “T") toward the end of the men and roughly in the middle of the entire group. I would have preferred to have been first or last, but that was the least of my worries since I hadn’t written my speech ahead of time.

The Controversy

One of the Convention organizers, Kristi Boone, talked about how we should handle things like applause, and lining up to keep the speeches moving. While doing this, she mentioned a printed flyer that she said were “recommended candidates.” She was holding one up as she did this and I must admit I hadn’t even looked at it, being buried in dozens of campaign flyers already. Kristi was one of the people on this list.

Her statement caused a ripple of unrest throughout the audience and some people shouted objections along with a few boos. One person asked, “If these are the recommended candidates, then why are we even having an election?” Many cheered this person on. Others wanted to know if the outcome was pre-determined.

The Obama campaign official in Wyandotte County, Stanley Adams, stepped in to explain. “No, no” he said. “Nothing is pre-determined.” He explained that these people who had worked so hard on the campaign had merely put themselves all on one sheet for easy identification. We were free to vote for whom we liked.

Later, in a speech by a man whose name I didn’t catch, he asked how many of us had been “vetted” by the Obama campaign. No one had. “But the people on this list have”, he said. “And that’s old-style back room politics the kind of which I thought Obama stood against.” He was visibly angry.

Kristi explained during her speech that the people on the list were the principal Obama campaign organizers. They’d all been formally recommended by the Obama campaign.

The Speeches

These are some notes I took from just a portion of all the speakers we listened to:

• Allan Abrams is a professional arbitrator who fells that his skills would be valuable at a convention. He’s Jewish and introduced his business partner, a Muslim, and talked about peace.
• Stanley Adams ran the Obama campaign in Wyandotte County and has put in hundreds of hours knocking on doors and running phone banks.
• Jimmy Banks talked about Rev. Wright and told us how he was U.S. Marine and a doctor for LBJ in the 1960s before becoming a preacher in Chicago and that the sound bites we’ve heard in the media miss the bigger picture.
• Todd Barrett is finishing medical school in five days and cares about health care.
• Paul Davis is the State Representative in Lawrence and has a nice voice.
• Matt Gibson is a scientist.
• Justin Hitt is 17 years old and goes to the high school we’re sitting in. He’s on the debate team and is student body vice-president.
• David Haley is the State Representative in Wyandotte County and withdrew from consideration because there are so many qualified candidates.
• Matt Lehrman said his wife’s birthday was today.
• John O’Connel said his wife passed away recently.
• Kristi Boone is the Johnson County chair for the Obama campaign and addressed the controversy noted above by saying she wasn’t sorry for having put her life on hold to work for the cause and that she shouldn’t be penalized for it. Most people visibly agreed with this.
• Debra Crane is a native New Yorker with lots of attitude and who cracked everyone up.
• Mozella Dyer knows Roberts Rules of Order and was the most exciting speaker I saw all afternoon.
• Alyce Edwards is school teacher at Arrowhead in Kansas City. She’s really nice and talked about the real need for hope and inspiration.
• Heather Getz says she doesn’t have a man in her life because “who could compete with Barack Obama?”
• Sheila Hartney says she’s a RINO hunter - Republican In Name Only.
• Marcie Inzer read a poem called “Republicans are Red, Democrats are Blue” and I couldn’t write it down fast enough to post here, but it was cute.
• Kathy Kircher is another person who put in hundreds of hours doing hard campaigning. Several other speakers withdrew to support her.
• “Older Woman” whose name I didn’t catch likened Obama to a character called The Golden Man in James Michener’s “Hawaii”
• Neela Barton is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and wore a big pink hat.
• Caroline Meritt was named after Caroline Kennedy. There were lots of JFK and RFK references today.
• Mahnaz Shabir spoke of being a minority faith in America, runs a website called americanmuslimwoman.com, and owns her own consulting business.
• K.O. Strohbehn brought a flowery hat but promised her kids she wouldn’t wear it. She’s a friend of mine on FaceBook now.
• Hilary Tilkins wore a shirt that read “Hillary for Obama”.
• Stefanie Tracy said she’s wanted a woman President since she was a little girl until she met Obama and says that, unlike Bush, she can admit when she’s wrong.
• Valdenia C. Winn is another State Representative from Wyandotte County and likes to build coalitions.

Resolution

My speech was amazing, according to dozens of people who came up to me afterward. It felt really good to get up in front of an auditorium and to just let the passion and the words flow. A Johnson County Democratic official asked me if I was interested in running for State Senate and he didn’t seem to be joking.

I didn’t win. I came close, but in the end we chose Stanley Adams, the man who had poured his life into the campaign, and Rep. Paul Davis who is a remarkable person. I wasn’t disappointed at all. I came away more enthusiastic about the future than when I went in and I met some great people, too. But, I’ll definitely be back in 2012. :-)

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