Gray Pledges to Obama
From the wilds of Southwest, Loose Lips columnist Mike DeBonis phones in this scoop:
D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray is an Obama guy. Throughout this crazy campaign season, Gray has done as good a job as anyone of keeping his prezzy preferences a secret. But fence-sitting time is over: The rules of the District of Columbia Democratic Party require that Gray now take a side if he’s going to represent D.C. in this summer’s convention.
Gray’s loyalties were confirmed by his chief of staff, Dawn Slonneger.
16 Responses to “Gray Pledges to Obama”
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March 7th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
But Jack Evans goes against the wishes to Ward 2 and pledges for Hillary:
http://caryforcouncil.org/campaign/index.php?blog=9&title=superdelegateevans&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
March 7th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
OK, here’s the thing about Jack: If Jack is pledged to Obama, he doesn’t go. Because Hillary got more than 15 percent of the vote, she’s guaranteed at one of the two PLEO (party leader/elected official) spots, according to DC Dem State Committee rules. So they’d have to find the next elected official down the PLEO list that supports Hillary. (Jim Graham, I think..) But guess what–Jim Graham would be going against the wishes of Ward 1–and so would any other Hillary-supporting elected official in this town since Obama won every precinct. Ridiculous? Yes. But that’s how it is.
March 7th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Also, Cary got it wrong: Jack is not a superdelegate. He’s a pledged PLEO delegate. He gets picked for the spot he gets precisely because he is pledged to Hillary.
March 8th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Mike: You can spin it pro-Jack if you like but the fact is Jack decided he wanted to be at the convention representing Hillary Clinton when his voters went for Obama.
Its his choice not to represent his voters.
March 8th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Oh, and Mike, how come you make it sound like Gray had a choice to be pro-Obama but that Jack did not have a choice?
March 10th, 2008 at 11:22 am
What do you mean “represent his voters”? Councilmembers are not obligated to represent their constituents’ presidential preferences. Evans has been a Hillary backer for months, long before the Obama juggernaut rolled through D.C. If he’d switched to Obama after the election, wouldn’t he be open to criticism for craven political posturing? In my mind, that criticism would be a lot more valid than “not representing” voters he’s not obligated to represent.
And I made it sound like Gray had a choice because he hadn’t made one yet. Like I mentioned above Jack’s made no secret about being a Hillary supporter for months. Gray _has_ made a secret about his preferences.
March 10th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Mike, isn’t the 15% threshold for when there are more than 3 delegates being awarded? For 3 delegates, it’s 16.667%, and for 2 delegates (which is what we’re talking about) it’s 25%. Since Obama got very nearly 76% of the overall Obama+Clinton votes, he gets both PLEOs — that is, Obama gets 2*0.76=1.52 and Clinton gets 2*0.24=0.48, which rounds to 2 and 0 — so Jack isn’t going as a PLEO if he’s a Clinton guy.
March 10th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
I’m going by what Anita Bonds, chair of the DC Democratic State Committee, told me. I asked several times, is one of the PLEO spots reserved for Clinton, and she said yes. I will go back and read the delegate selection plan to see if you are correct.
March 10th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
OK, I’ve scoured the D.C. Delegate Selection Plan (http://dcdsc.grassroots.com/resources/DC_Delegate_Selection_Plan.pdf), and my reading seems to indicate that the 15 percent rule is indeed correct regardless of the size of the delegate pool.
The rule says the PLEO spots are allocated the same way as the at-large spots. The at-large rule is:
“b. Preferences which have not attained a 15% threshold on a state-wide basis shall not be entitled to any at-large delegates. (Rule 13.E.)
c. If no presidential preference reaches a 15% threshold, the threshold shall be the percentage of the statewide vote received by the front-runner, minus 10%. (Rule 13.F.)”
KCinDC–can you point me to where you found the rule about the percentage changing depending on the size of the delegate pool?
March 10th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I had initially thought the PLEOs were split 1-1 as you say, but someone (I can’t remember who) corrected me. Looking at the rules now (http://www.democrats.org/page/-/dem_convention/rules.pdf), the changing percentage is actually something that works out from the rules for distributing the delegates, not something that’s specified. So it’s true that Clinton isn’t eliminated as nonviable — it’s just that she doesn’t get any delegates when you go through the calculation. Rule 13.D is the calulation method.
Obama got 93,386 votes, and Clinton got 29.470. So after all the nonviable candidates are eliminated (Step 1) you get these percentages (Step 2):
93386/(93386+29470) = 76.013% Obama
29470/(93386+29470) = 23.987% Clinton
Then you multiply by 2 delegates (Step 3):
76.013% * 2 = 1.52026 Obama
23.987% * 2 = 0.47974 Clinton
Step 4 then assigns 1 delegate to Obama and 0 to Clinton, for the whole number parts. Finally, in Step 5, the remaining delegate goes to Obama, because the fractional part is higher than the one for Clinton.
If you can verify this one way or the other, let me know (keith@dcdl.org).
March 10th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Your reading seems to be correct! Let me see if I can talk straight to Don Dinan, who would be the guy who knows for sure…
March 10th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Yes, someone else had suggested that Dinan was the guy to talk to, so I sent him an e-mail tonight with my reasoning.
March 11th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Interesting, the PLEO story now has legs…
March 11th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
OK! Here’s the answer from Dinan, who’s in charge of the delegate selection process: Clinton and Obama will split the PLEO slots. Reasoning is that the PLEO rule references the at-large rule, and the at-large rule references the elected delegate rule, which is where the 15 percent floor comes in. Dinan says this was run by DNC honchos, who agreed with the 15-percent-rule interpretation.
March 11th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
I’d still like to see what the specific rule is that says Clinton gets one of the PLEOs. All the 15% threshold rule says is that you don’t get delegates if you’re below 15%. There’s no guarantee anywhere that I can find that says you’ definitely do get a delegate if you reach 15%, and in fact if you follow the steps for delegate allocation for elected delegates (rule 13.D), they say she gets 0 PLEOs. It’s certainly possible that I’m missing a rule somewhere, but so far no one’s pointed it out to me.
March 13th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Having read the rules myself I would agree with KCinDC.
There’s a story there Mike. Investigate the corruption.