Broken Trust, Broken Rules: My Democratic Convention

Once upon a time, I had a dream of being a State Delegate for Barack Obama. This dream was ripped away by The Hillary Clinton Fan Club, also known as the Tom Green County Democratic Club. At the county convention, we experienced a quagmire beyond our wildest dreams, spearheaded by professed Clinton-backer Linda Shoemaker. What she did was ignore and break Texas Democratic Party rules in an attempt to obtain more delegates for Clinton. Obama was supposed to be given at least 8 delegates, but the Nominations committee decided to award him 3. Furthermore, 2 more delegates were to be elected, At-Large. The Nominations Committee, a committee made up of 4 Clinton delegates, and 3 Obama delegates, decided to attempt to award the remaining delegates to Clinton, to make it 21 to 3. Several other Obama delegates and I, including John Perry (who had an interesting role in this), decided to contest the decision, because we knew that Obama had not been properly represented in elected delegates to the State Convention. How did we, the Obama delegates, go from have a little over 1/3 of the delegates present to having a 1:7 ratio, in Clinton's favor, elected to the State Convention? I will tell you how: opposition from Linda Shoemaker. When we brought the issue forward, we read the rules to her clearly. However, she used the vague language of the Party Rules to attempt to deny our claim. She asked us to point out in the rules where it says we are supposed to give Obama the delegates he deserves? You see, the rules read: Poll results shall be used by the Nominations Committee and by the Convention as a whole as the basis for nominating and for electing At-Large Delegates so as to ensure the fairest possible representation of the Convention participants as a whole within the total Delegation. Therefore, according to Shoemaker, 21 to 3 was a fair representation. Well, Linda, prepared to be blown away, for I have found another resource from the Texas Democratic Party that shows me that rules were broken. Here is what the document, which can be found on http://www.txdemocrats.org/, states: The results of all the elections within the precincts are added together and given to the Nominations Committee. This committee then distributes the "at-large" delegates among each of the presidential candidates so that the county's delegation reflects each candidate's fair share of the convention. For instance, if supporters of Jane Doe made up 50% of your convention, the Nominations Committee would work to see that 50% of the delegates to the State Convention from your county would be her supporters. This is not what happened, and is not what you tried to make sure happened. You attempted to give Clinton 87% of the delegates. You denied John Perry and several other Obama delegates a chance to speak on the matter and did not allow us to make a challenge to the unfair distribution that took place. After the nominations were announced, several Obama delegates, feeling outnumbered and disgusted to the matter, left, leaving us underrepresented when it came time to bring forth the wrongdoing done to the Obama delegates. Has the Democratic party become the Republican party, so hungry for their candidate to win that they will break rules to get what they want? You can count on me attempting to contest the convention, Tom Green County. I am, as of now, disenchanted with the Tom Green County Democratic Club. Maybe this explains why when I sent an email to the Club on January 23^rd^ stating that I wanted to get involved, but also stating that I supported Obama, I never got a response back. Thank you for ruining the political process for me, and discouraging over 1/3 of caucus participants from ever trusting their voice to be properly and fairly heard again. Have the wounds of the 2000 election not been enough, Linda? Think about that before you condone actions that will split our party.

-Joel Vasquez
Precinct 338