~ Michael Lee, Club President

California Democrats held our annual convention the weekend of April 24-26.  These conventions are normally pretty tame affairs since the agenda is controlled by the Chair and the elected officials. However, this year's meeting had some surprises.

On Saturday, the delegates elected the 2009 State Officers.  The establishment candidates, (John Burton for Chair, Alexandra Gallardo-Rooker for Female Vice Chair, Eric Bauman for Male Vice Chair and Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer for Secretary), easily won their respective offices.  However, there was an upset.  Hilary Crosby ran an efficient internet and phone bank campaign and did best the incumbent with 54% of the vote.  She promises to create good two way communication between volunteers and party leadership and inspire new donors to invest in the Party.  Our own regional director, Karen Wingard, was re-elected unanimously.

On Sunday, delegates assembled to determine the C.D.P. positions on the May 19th Special Election Initiatives.  The day before, the Resolution Committee voted to recommend "Yes" on all six propositions.  This was expected since the Chair appoints all committee members.  As we delegates listed to speeches from Senator Boxer, Lt. Gov. Garamendi, Mayor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Jerry Brown, our state legislators were much in evidence on the floor and in our caucuses.  Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker Angela Bass led legislators in advocating for these propositions.  Since the elected officials appoint one-third of all delegates, many of us assumed that the yes votes would meet the 60% requirement needed for endorsement.  That is not what happened.  The results: Prop. 1A (58% yes), Prop. 1B (yes on voice vote), Prop. 1C (yes, 67%), Prop. 1D (yes, 52%) and Prop. 1E (yes, 50.1%) and Prop. 1F (yes on voice vote).  This means the party positions is neutral on Props. 1A, 1D and 1E.  I can only surmise that given that the elected appointees were one-third of the vote, the other two thirds of the delegates (coming from the County Committees and assembly regional caucuses) supported the propositions at a rate of approximately one out of four votes, at most.  Many delegates felt that Democratic Legislators had been outmanuevered in the budget negotiations, and did not accept the view of the leadership that this is the best deal that could be worked out this year.

Our new Chair laid out our adenda for the upcoming elections.  Next year, we must elect a Democratic Governor and re-elect Senator Boxer.  We must also defeat the open primary initiative on the June 8, 2010 primary ballot and pass a majority vote proposition.