1,200 Attend Galveston County’s Combined Convention

The Galveston County Daily News has some notes on the Galveston County Democratic Convention, which was a combined convention of Senate Districts 17 and 11:

Galveston County Democrats on Saturday made official what has been suspected since March: Barack Obama might have lost the Election Day primary to Hillary Clinton, but he was the decisive winner in the election-night caucus.

Texas Democrats apportion national delegates according to state Senate District. In the Galveston County, Obama took 60 percent of the delegates in Senate District 11, which encompasses most of the county.

Senate District 17, which includes most of Galveston Island, the Bolivar Peninsula and a sliver of the eastern part of the county, was much closer. Obama took 51 percent of caucus delegates to Clinton’s 48 percent.

In Galveston County as in many places, there were difficulties that had to be handled by the true unsung heroes of the convention process: the credentials committee:

And with overwhelming turnout in many precincts, the election-night caucuses were plagued by confusion and irregularities.

The party appointed a credentials committee evenly split between Clinton and Obama supporters to sort through those irregularities.

The committee worked every day from the time of its appointment and on Friday, it even held a do-over of a precinct caucus in Dickinson.

But on Saturday, as the committee reported the numbers of delegates for each precinct to the convention, it inadvertently used an incorrect list.

That prompted Michael Jacobs, an Obama delegate from Galveston, to try to stop the proceeding and point out several mistakes.

Before he finished, a dozen other delegates lined up behind him, awaiting the microphone to report other discrepancies.

But county party Chairman Lloyd Criss was having none of it.

He had Jacobs’ microphone turned off and instructed the committee to complete its report, which was then ratified.

But later, after the credentials committee unearthed its mistake, delegates were reapportioned, which appeared to satisfy both Obama and Clinton supporters.

Not a major snafu, but dealing with credentials matters takes time and can be imperfect.

The Galveston paper also notes something else worthy of discussion:

And even though Saturday’s crowd was highly diverse and celebrated that fact, there still were racial tensions, however subtle.

Johnny Grimes, 54, was an Obama delegate from Texas City.

He said he and other African-Americans in the past didn’t get involved in the nitty-gritty of party politics.

“We felt disenfranchised,” he said.

But when large numbers of blacks came out for Saturday’s convention, Grimes sensed that it made some white Democrats uneasy.

He said a white delegate was reluctant to sit with his precinct’s overwhelmingly black delegation.

“There’s that fear factor,” Grimes said.

I seriously doubt there was a real “fear factor,” either in Galveston County or anywhere else. But of course, the media needs something to latch on to.

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