by Ella Tyler
The State Democratic Convention will convene on Friday, June 9 - 10 at the Fort Worth Convention Center. The preliminary resolutions committee, made up of one SDEC member from each district, will meet Wednesday and the SDEC will meet Thursday. Other preliminary committees meet on Wednesday.
Most of the important action of the convention will occur at the Senate District (SD) Caucuses on Friday at the Convention Center.
If you are a delegate to the convention, but will not be able to attend, you may select an alternate to take your place. If you do not choose a representative, the delegation will choose the alternate. The alternate must be from the same county and SD.
On Thursday, be sure to attend the Kick-off reception. It will be at the Hilton Hotel at 6pm. Tickets begin at $50, unless you are a sustaining member of the Texas Democratic Party, and then they are $35. The Hilton is the Headquarters Hotel, and there will be more parties to go to and hospitality suites to visit after.
On Friday, get to the convention early so there is plenty of time to pick up your credentials before the SD Caucus, attend any special interest caucuses you are interested in and visit the vendors booths. Credentials pick up begins at 10a.m. You pick up your credentials according to your SD. Find out where your caucus will meet when you pick up your credentials. Special interest caucuses run from 9am to 3pm. As soon as I know a schedule, I will post it to the SD 17 website. Downtown Fort Worth has free trolleys that run constantly, so if you want to go someplace else for lunch or go back to the hotel, it is easy.
Be at your SD caucus at 3pm. The first thing to do will be to fill open delegate spots with alternates. A county votes its full delegate strength even if it does not have all its delegates spots filled, but if there are no delegates from the county, those votes are not cast. For example, if, even after using alternates, Harris County SD 17 had only 45 delegates at the meeting, it would still vote 89 votes.
Next, we will elect our district’s member of the permanent convention committees. The committees include credentials, nominations (for party offices), platform, resolutions and rules. We then elect our state democratic executive committeeman and committeewoman. According to Party rules, no secret ballots are allowed for these elections. There is no requirement that any person elected to any of these posts come from a certain county and any agreements made ahead of time are not binding.
When the caucus is over, we will go to the main convention hall and the convention will officially begin at 6pm on Friday after a keynote speech and a speech by Chris Bell. The convention will probably recess about 9pm. Again, there will be parties and hospitality suites.
On Saturday, the committees meet at 8am and these meetings are open to all participants.
At 8:30am there is the Blue Star Breakfast which also couples as a fundraiser. Tickets are $25. There will also be workshops from 9:30 - 11:00am. The convention is called back to order at 11:00am. This is when the state party officers are elected and we will hear a variety of speakers. We have some interesting and passionate candidates for Congressional and Texas House seats, and you will enjoy hearing from them.
The rules and credentials committee reports will come out first and the reports from the platform and resolutions committee will probably be last. After that, the convention adjourns.
Hotels are not assigned by Senate Districts. If you want to stay with your district, there is no way to guarantee that, but the best thing to do is have everyone request the same first and second choice hotels and register early.
To volunteer, contact your SDEC members. They will need help handing out credentials. You can also volunteer by e-mailing escramble('convention','txdemocrats.org.'); Use that e-mail to find out about renting a booth, placing a convention ad or donating an item to the silent auction at the Thursday night party.
See you in Fort Worth!