After reading the news articles about the goings-on at the other conventions, overall ours wasn’t that bad. Sure we couldn’t hear anything, and in some cases had no idea what we were voting on, but hey, I guess that is the “Democratic Way”. 
The caucus results of 87 individual precincts in Senate District 12 were challenged, mostly by the Clinton campaign as a last-ditch effort to try to get delegates since she didn’t earn them outright by having enough people show up to caucus on March 4.
In our training at the Mock Convention, we were told to let a delegate here or there go and be gracious, we are, after all, the campaign of inclusion and not disenfranchisement (it wasn’t Obama supporters who were locking people out of buildings in Nevada, thats for sure), so when our precinct was told by the credentials committee we had to go from 21 Obama delegates to 20 and Clinton received 5 rather than 4, we said “fine, whatever”.
Of course it helped that only 4 Clinton delegates bothered to show up, while we were 20 strong. 
Still, since we had to fill 2 state delegate and 2 state alternate slots, we had to ensure all of our 4 Obama delegate nominees had at least 5 votes each. Had we split on any of them, the Clinton group could have voted en masse and we may have had lost an alternate spot to them. But we were organized, and we prevailed.
One of the Clinton delegates was a mystery to me. She was a younger girl, there with her parents. She claimed to have been the person responsible for the challenge in our precinct. Now, to mount a challenge, you really need to have knowledge of the process. There are specific rules which need to be followed, letters need to be sent to the right people, and a deadline needs to be followed. You have to either get that information from your campaign, from the county/state Democratic party HQ, or online. Also, to challenge the “math” (which was what she based our challenge on, rounding up vs rounding down and when which was done when in the tabulation process) you need access to information regarding how many people signed in, which preference they chose, and who was selected as alternates, etc. In other words, you really need to be involved to mount a challenge.
This same delegate was complaining to me that the reason that the remainder of the delegates and alternates for the Clinton campaign in our precinct failed to show up is because nobody called them to tell them where to go or what to do. And that nobody called her and told her where to go or what to do. She was almost implying that it was our responsibility as Obama delegates to ensure that we hound their supporters to do the job their caucus-goers had elected them for. It sounded like the Clinton campaign was, at best, not very organized in their case.
I can confidently say that was NOT an issue with Obama supporters in our precinct. Katherine, the precinct caucus secretary, and Glenda, our Obama precinct captian, were staying on top of things all along, attending trainings, and emailing and calling delegates and alternates right up to the mock convention and after. Obama delegates who did not attend the mock convention were either accounted for via phone calls/emails or, in some cases, we went over to their homes to talk with them in person to ensure they were going to be there on Saturday. We cared.
And it paid off. Although not all of the Obama delegates and alternates were able to attend, had even ONE person who was there yesterday not shown up, we could have lost an alternate position to Clinton. Proof that EVERY vote counts. The Obama delegates who were there knew they were entrusted by the 300+ people who caucused for Obama on March 4 in our precinct to show up and make those votes heard.
And it was not exactly a pleasant way to spend the day. It was not as bad as SD10, which was going on well into the night, but it wasn’t a picnic either.
We met at our March 4th caucus location at 7am, drove in a caravan to the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, and began our wait at 8am in our first line. After about 1/2 hour, we were moved to another line. After another 45 min or so, we were told that our precinct was one of the 87 which were being challenged, so we should go sit down and they would deal with us later. Many of us were NOT comfortable with that direction (especially since we were getting conflicting information), so we decided as a group to send some to sit and some would remain in line. Later those in line were instructed to move to ANOTHER line, this one for challenged precincts. After getting their credential badges, those in line switched places with those seated and we went to that line to sign in. This process took roughly the first 2 hours, and was all for nothing in our precinct.
Later our precinct was called up (we were lucky, because it was a low number we were one of the first called) to be reviewed by the credentials committee member, who told us we lost one Obama delegate, and then certified 20 Obama delegates and 4 Clinton delegates for our precinct. The young Clinton supporter who mounted the challenge was again causing delays by claiming that it was unfair… it was possible (in her mind) that more Clinton supporters for our precinct were outside in the halls waiting in line, etc. So, because we are the campaign of grace, class and inclusion, we gave her our sign that we had been using to group our folks together for our precinct and said we would wait for her while she went out to the halls to hunt down more Clinton supporters that belonged to our precinct. I also told her where she could find the listing of delegates/alternates for the precinct, which included Clinton supporters, so that she could phone them and ask if they were on their way, etc. She said she “didn’t care if they were”, again showing me that this was simply a tactic on the Clinton campaign’s part to cause enough delays to the process in hopes that Obama supporters, who outnumbered them, would just get fed up and go home before their vote could be counted.
We were then led to another area to wait. Finally we were given another opportunity to sign in, and given new credentials badges. Now we were officially voting members of the convention.
Earlier, while we were out of the convention area doing this, a motion was called to just suspend the credentials challenges and award equal amounts of delegates to both Clinton and Obama for each of the 87 precincts. SAY WHAT?!?!?! Yeah, THAT didn’t go over well! Could you imagine? All the hard work of all the Obama supporters who showed up to caucus on March 4th, staying into late hours of the night to ensure their vote is recorded and their delegates are assigned, just thrown away due to the dirty tricks of a campaign that would do anything to win? It makes me just sick to think about it. Especially when as a group, Obama supporters have gone WAY out of their way to make sure things are fair and ensure inclusiveness towards Clinton supporters, even though they were obviously outnumbered.
Fortunately, the majority of the conventioneers wanted to ensure that all delegtaes were seated fairly, so that notion was quickly shot down and the credentials committee plodded on for hours, finally getting everything sorted out in all 87 challenged precincts by about 3pm, 6 hours after we had began.
The acoustics in the area were horrible… unless you were seated in the first 3-4 rows you simply could not understand what was being said due to multiple speakers in the ceiling vying with concrete block walls and floors. Sound was bouncing everywhere, so even though it was loud, it was unintelligible. A few of our delegation sat on the floor in the front of the room and came back to relay to us when something important was being discussed, or relayed info via text messages on phones.
Finally it was time to do what we had come for: vote for our delegates to attend the State convention in June. We had agreed ahead of time who would be going (heck, we had a LOT of time to discuss things while we had been going through this process), so we grouped everyone in groups of 5 to rally behind each of the 4 candidates. They were nominated, along with two Clinton candidates, and then voted on, with each of the 4 Obama candidates getting 5 votes, one Clinton candidate getting 3 votes and one Clinton candidate getting 1 vote. So by 5 or 6pm, it was officially determined that Obama will be sending 2 delegates and 2 alternates to our State Convention from precinct 1227.
I am so proud of every person who showed up and stayed with it! It would have been easy to get discouraged anywhere along the way (the line for food was 45 min to an hour, the room was freezing, the din and noise level was such that my ears were still ringing hours later) but they did not and that dedication shows me that people WANT to see change! And we held ourselves with grace and class… that same Clinton supporter attempted to bait me into a discussion about race and Rev Wright and all that and I deflected her (even though her statements did offend me) and held my own, something I am learning every day by example that Obama sets for all of us who support him.
One of our delegates, Mr Trice, suggested that each Obama delegate be assigned 30 people in our precinct to stay in touch with between now and November to ensure they come out to vote for Obama then as well. What a great idea! And hopefully each of them will tell 30 friends, and so on…
but a rain delay is always better than a snow delay! 
I think, however, that we will only host one person a month going forward, as it takes a lot of time and money to be good hosts. Nice to have visitors, but I really really like having my house back to myself again too.
). We need a firepit, some tiki torches, a new grill, those big beer buckets… I can’t wait! Then we will have a little patio warming party and invite everyone.
. Lots more stuff being listed Sunday night for next week though. I have another 200+ items to go through, 10 at a time. That’ll take a while, probably right on up to end of June, which is Sconnie Time (baseball, camping and Summerfest!).
