Senate District Conventions

This is the place to report on your activities today at your senate district conventions! What happened with your resolutions? Any excitement with candidate appearances? Let's hear it!

I was at the Senate District 17 convention (Fort Bend County).

Just a couple of local candidates were there. They were impressive and sincere.

There were 31 of us and we have 37 slots for the state convention so we elected all 31 of us to go as delegates and our nominations committee will seek people for the other 6 spots plus alterantes.

I served on the resolutions committee. We approved resolutions on issues including voter verified paper trail, protecting reproductive rights of women, following our laws on spying on US citizens, following our laws on treatment of detainees, use of embryonic stem cells for research, some issues involving social security for teachers, increasing teacher pay and others that I can't remember right now!

The meeting took about three hours.

We got into one heated argument during the discussion on reproductive rights. One gentleman wanted language in the resolution against partial birth abortions (late term abortions). I about came unglued. He somehow buys into the Republican party line that women line up for this as an elective procedure and thinks they should all be banned. He doesn't have any clue that this sometimes needs to be done for medical reasons and that it is pretty horrifying for all concerned. I have a best friend who is a labor and delivery nurse and has participated in these for medical reasons and these are not fun and games.

Sometimes I feel so strongly about things that it is very hard for me to respectfully disagree and I should probably work on that. When it comes to my own body and that of my daughter's and when it is a man arguing against me about that, I get a bit worked up.

The resolution passed without adding the exception for partial birth abortions.

We had several candidates - included David Van Os who ROCKED!!!

Everyone who wanted to be a delegate was able to go, so we didn't have to have precinct caucuses.

A couple of resolutions didn't pass because they were badly written, but most did, including getting us out of Iraq, and impeaching the Chimperor and Vice-Chimperor.

It was really great to see so many progressives show up! It gives me hope!

I am in 10.

Passed resolution re: choice w/o opposition
Passed resolution re: health care
I left the list in the car, but it was a long list.


Chris Bell was the headline speaker!
We also had both LtGov candidates in the upcoming runoff, and both were good.
OH and we had Jim Wright at the morning general session before we broke up into senatorial groupings. He gave a nice rousing talk.

Good turnout, too.

WHO HAS THE GREEN VOLVO WAGON WITH THE DU BUMPER STICKER?

I'm jealous.

Really, that's terrrific!!

203 slots but only 78 have been taken - hopefully we'll be able to get more.

Leticia Van de Putte and Joaquin Castro spoke - Leticia was fired up and gave a good speech, about Republicans hijacking religion - told us to remember the civil rights movement came from OUR churches- "when did God become a Republican??". She also talked about redistricting and how Texas Democrats took a stand and went to Arizona, and about how the Republicans, if they can't get it at the ballot box, will take it anyway by any means they can.
Joaquin was laid back and recalled growing up in San Antonio and why he came back here after Harvard; more personal vs. political.

We had 27 resolutions under consideration; all passed but one. "Transparency on Who's on the Ballot as a Democrat" drew the most debate and a few people used their outside voices, lol. In the end, it passed - would allow the voting record and campaign contributions for Democratic candidates to be listed on the Texas Democrat Party's website. We also had a lone dissenter on all the resolutions, regardless of what they were. The resolution to impeach Bush got hollers of "aye"!! and rounds of applause.

and about 100 of our alternate spots.

We passed something like 24 of the resolutions that our precincts sent us. However, our precincts sent us something like 50 resolutions, so we agreed to let our resolutions committee continue working after the convention and submit their work to the senatorial executive committee for submission to state. Since I am on resolutions I got to enjoy two or three bonus hours of meetings and I guess I will get a few more before I am done.

We also passed three interesting possible amendments to the TDP rules which I will describe to you when I am more sober.

We had one round of candidates in the AM, about 25, and we had another round of candidates in the PM, another 20 or so.

Our meeting took like 6 hours. I need another beer. :beer:

183 slots. I'm jealous. I'm in such a republican area! We only have 31 slots. Good for you. I know what you mean about needing another beer. I was on the resolution committee and it was sort of grueling. Yeah, go have another beer and get back to us. I can't remember all of our resolutions either!!

We basically only elected delegates and had some conversation about things we want to do... but have to tell you, I'm happy to see this. The guy what was the precinct chair before this didn't even have county conventions, so this is a step forward.

I take it that people *could* have talked about resolutions they wanted to bring to the state convention, yes?

Just write them up and bring them along! I learned a couple of things --- summarize your content in your title, i.e. "A Resolution In Favor of X." Also if it fits on one page and covers one topic, that's the best.

you have to get signatures in support of it from a pre-set percentage of the delegates at the State Convention for it to be considered. You can't just walk into the State Resolutions Committee with a new resolution and get it heard.

Dan Dodd (TX-3), Charlie Thompson (TX-5), and Will Pryor (TX-32) all spoke at our SD 16 convention. I consider that just as good as a Chris Bell speech.

:applause::applause::applause:

I missed it all, but I have it on good authority from a fellow DU'er, who got it from an SD23 credentials committee member, that the nominations committee meeting got heated. Unfortunately the ugly racial politics of Dallas presents itself in party politics as well. My district is 3-way ethnically diverse, but some people felt it was more important to ignore the rules to favor their own ethnic group (to the point of tossing out alternate delegate forms), rather than unify to win in November.
If y'all want to see real fireworks at the State Convention, drop by the SD 23 caucus.:popcorn: We never fail to entertain. :evilgrin:

especially if DINO Cuellar insists on speaking again. I think I just might walk out if he does. :evilgrin:

dg

Travis County. Also a whole lot of other folks. I missed out on most of the resolutions (darn the luck!) because I was on the Nominations Committee for SD25. I highly recommend serving on a committee and actually being part of the sausage-making process.

Had wonderful speakers, Melancon was by far the standout!

I went 2 years ago, and it lasted until after 7pm, but at east much of it was spent debating resolutions. This time, I spent over 3.5 hours in the nominations committee, most my time devoted to wonderingwhat the HELL we were doing there! At least an hour was spent just so the guys could data enter the delegate and alternate info. Then another 2 hours to check every person who might want to be a delegate but wasn't. And this was a relatively small group, compared to others! It just seemed to me that there had to be a more efficient way of doing this! I left at around 3:40, and the meeting was still not over, and there were only a dozen people left milling about in the main meeting room, still waiting for us.