Upcoming Convention

The State Democratic Party Convention will convene on Saturday and the 1000 plus delegates are being pummeled by phone calls and letters from the candidates. That is happening because a candidate must get at least 20% of the delegate vote to get on the ballot. If they fail to obtain that then they must go out and get a lot more signatures. Probably everyone will end up with enough and the only reason one wants to win is to get the top ballot position on the voting machines. That used to mean something on the old mechanical voting machines but it really doesn't mean much anymore because the new machines are so easy to read.

Here is a true story from my first race for land commissioner in 1982. I was an inexperienced candidate when I showed up to the convention. In those days they were much more of a "political machine" kind of operation. I knew I was in trouble the night before the convention when I found out my opponent had paid for half the hotel rooms for the delegates. My opponent was the oil and gas candidate and had been a long time employee of the land office. He and his friends really did a job on me. He ended up with 74% of the delegate vote. I ended up with 26% and was essentially written off by politicos as a serious candidate. Oh, except that I won the election two months later by 1000 votes after being outspent eight to one in campaign dollars. I went on to lead the ticket in the general election that year in which the Democrats did so well.

One thing I have noticed is that there are a lot of new people now involved in the party. They will be at the convention and they are not 'machine' oriented, but issue oriented. That is good for us all.