To: John Salazar, Ken Salazar, Mark Udall, Governor Ritter, Pat Waak, Ramona Martinez, Diana DeGette, Mannie Rodriquez, and Maria Handley
From: Robert Nemanich
Precinct 147 Committee-person, El Paso Democratic Party
Date: March 10, 2008
RE: Presidential Campaign and local candidate/party feedback
(email addresses are to political offices and sent to those committed to Clinton or unaffiliated)
I am writing to you because I think this feedback is critically important to the party. The subject I am speaking to is the "crossing the line" that former Senator Gary Hart addressed in his March 7th post to the "Huffington Post titled: "Breaking the Final Rule". As leaders of our party you can discuss the merits of Sen. Hart’s premises (which I hold are true ), but more important is not the political rhetoric or political science discussions, but what Clinton's new campaign rhetoric is now having on the party and candidates at the local level.
In short, my illustration comes from an event I attended last Friday night. It was an El Paso County Party event where over 50 others attended the home of Karen Teja and receive a "Progressive Movement" presentation about running local campaigns. The purpose of my attendance was to learn about running local campaigns, I am well experienced, but to meet up with local candidates whom I would be working with this summer and fall as a party person. I am proud to say that I have turned around a previously traditional 40% Democratic voting precinct into one that is now voting a majority towards Democratic, upon moving to CO almost three years ago. For the record: (delivered 55% for Ritter, 53% for Fawcett, 51% for Lord in ’06), where we also brought in 48 to this year’s caucus, when in ’06 I was the only person to show up and 13 individuals participated in 2000, 3-fold increase.
My discussions with our local candidates discussed how we needed to be working on quickly incorporating those large numbers of grass-roots volunteers from the Obama campaign and those who are now active precinct committee-persons from the Clinton campaign into their respective local campaign districts be they a House or Senate district or the Congressional race. In each case, the discussion arose from them about Clinton’s new campaign rhetoric and their respective anger, concern and disapproval of it. Each remained openly neutral, but all three voiced serious issues and concerns about Clinton’s positioning where they viewed it as in effect, as endorsing the Republican opponent (McCain), as qualified to be "Commander-in-Chief" while not endorsing her own party’s competitor, as being qualified and merely giving a speech or the use of that phone call ad.
They all foresaw serious issues for their own campaigns if Clinton somehow came to head the ticket and currently foreseeing serious damages to the entire Democratic ticket down to their own local elections if the current campaign continued, through March and April or beyond.
All privately expressed the need for the "party leadership", namely superdelegates, to take a measured lead in ending this serious discourse and destructive infighting. In their minds Obama has emerged as the standard-bearer for ’08, where his campaign would have a better lead effect on their ticket by potentially bringing in disgruntled Republicans and Independents that are necessary to win in El Paso County as well as in other battleground districts in the state. They all believe Obama would have a "tailcoat effect" on their local campaigns where in effect for the Democratic Party could win the open Senate seat and take another House District seat. Here on the west side of Colorado Springs we will need to gather 10-11% of registered Republicans along with a huge turnout and majority of Democratic and Unaffiliated voters to be victorious.
These local anecdotal expressions cannot be unique nor be in the minority. In fact speaking on the telephone yesterday with another precinct committee-person who attended a political party in Boulder Saturday night, stated that she also had similar conversations local politicians up there. The bottom-line is that there are many functions that a superdelegate position holds, the most inherent is to lead the party where one takes the actions that are in the best interests of the party. Sitting on the sidelines as uncommitted or remaining politically loyal to one candidate who has openly confused the concept of a party competitor for the nomination and the political opponent for President is not leading when the time is critical to lead. Simply calling for Clinton to stop is not going to work, only the precipitous movement of superdelegates by changing a commitment from [Clinton to unaffiliated] or [unaffiliated to Obama] will in fact stop this, and possibly bring closure to the now destructive campaign, and I do understand you situation as a host governor, but that was before this situation.
That is my feedback to you my state party leadership. I will state I am a local Obama volunteer leader and have been from last summer. But also managed and encouraged all Clinton supporters in my precinct to participate without bias in the caucus and subsequent county convention. I can’t say that this neutrality was expressed by my fellow Democratic Party committee-persons, but nonetheless I know that party unity is the only pathway to progressively moving this nation and state forward. I would be happy to discuss this on the telephone but I thought you should know this going forward and this was not directed by anyone but my own conscience.
Robert Nemanich
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