Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis: A day at the county convention

Monday, March 10, 2008

A day at the county convention

Sorry for the delay in posting Celtic, I've been having a bit of fun with the spring plague. This weekend I went to county convention and assembly at the Colorado Convention Center as an alternate delegate. It was wonderful to play my part in the creation of history. This August, Denver will have the pleasure of nominating either the first African American, or first female presidential candidate.

The morning started with bagels with Paul Rosenthal. There was a pre assembly breakfast. The breakfast started at 7, which meant many arrivals were on Democrat time, and showed up 15-20 minutes late (myself included ;) We quickly grabbed our breakfast from the frazzled wait staff and flew off to the catch the 7:41 light rail to downtown. Of course half of the group missed the light rail by seconds, so we had to do some finagling through other trains to get to the convention center on time. On the train, the campaigning began as a cheerful woman handed out flyers announcing her candidacy for National delegate. Competition is fierce this year for the hometown event.

On arrival to the convention center, The blue bear statue outside cheerfully gazed down at a scene of mass chaos. Outside there were protesters for various causes from poverty to the Iraq war, inside there were thousands of people with no idea where they were going. We wandered around, collecting stickers and signs for our various political candidates. There were many raucous calls for Obama or Hillary. One woman walked in front of me with a blue sequined vest and a crocheted hat of red white and blue covered in Hillary stickers.

I eventually found my precinct, and signed in. I was provided a placard to tie around my neck, which included the time I checked in. The alternate delegates would be chosen on a first come, first served basis. I surreptitiously checked out the competition,and was sad to see that I had no chance in hell of being picked. Some of the people had been there since 7am. My check in time was 8:31.

They let in the delegates while we alts stayed outside. After some confusion, they decided to let the alternates come in as well while they decided what to do with us. Here is a shot I took with my cell phone from inside the Wells Fargo building. Normally attendance at these events is scarce, this year the building was packed jam full.



Several Colorado politicans were there. We heard a speech from Ken Salazar, and saw the nomination process for DA Mitch Morrissey. Then they herded the alternates out to find out our fate. We lined up in Pro Hillary and Pro Obama lines. As I suspected, my 8:31 time slot had no chance of being chosen. Considering how packed the building was, I wouldn't be surprised if no alternates were chosen. No one wanted to sleep through history being made.

If this interest and excitement is indicative of how the rest of the election will proceed, I am looking forward to the election of our next Democrat president :)

2 Comments:

Blogger CelticDiva said...

Nice post, girl! I hope you are at least feeling a little better!

3/10/2008 7:57 PM  
Blogger monocot said...

well, I'm seeing some improvement now that they decided after 4 weeks of hacking up a lung that maybe it wasn't a virus... go go little antibiotics go.

3/11/2008 3:15 AM  

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