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Friday, June 27, 2008

Yes, PLEOs!

posted by on June 27 at 11:57 AM

The state Democratic Party chose its Political Leaders and Elected Officials (PLEO) delegates to the national party convention in Denver earlier this week. The process works like this: PLEO delegates to the state convention campaign to move forward to the national convention. After a round of speeches and such, the PLEO delegates pick a slate of national delegates from among their peers.

The list of delegates for Obama (seven in all) includes Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, State Rep. Dave Upthegrove, and state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles. Notably absent from that list are state Senate majority leader Lisa Brown and state Sen. Ed Murray, who says he did not actively campaign for PLEO spot. (Rep. Dave Upthegrove, another Obama PLEO delegate, gives a detailed, and somewhat different, account of the day’s events on his MySpace blog). “I was a delegate four years ago and it was rather a torturous experience,” Murray said. “We were on the floor for hours and hours and there weren’t enough seats, so you couldn’t even get up and get a glass of water.”

Although state party chair Dwight Pelz (who did not want to talk about the selection process) had hoped to see another Obama PLEO, Matt Bergman, elected as a delegate to the convention, the elected officials and other bigwigs who chose the delegates actually decided on a Clinton delegate instead—Dr. Victor Collymore, a physician at Group Health who gave what Clinton PLEO Linda Mitchell called “an amazing, moving speech” on Clinton’s behalf. Mitchell says delegates also felt that Collymore, who is African-American, “rounded out” the Washington state delegation.

RSS icon Comments

1

You mean those idiots you always see packed on the convention floor gasping for air and waving silly hats and banners are in fact real officials with real jobs that need doing? I always assumed they were all Party hangers-on like Will in Seattle.

Posted by elenchos | June 27, 2008 12:58 PM
2

Actually, it was the entire previously elected group of national delegates who elected Collymore - not bigwhigs or electeds. The group was, as you can imagine, dominated by Obama delegates. Collymore's speech was really good - he talked about uniting the two sides (invoking Lincoln and united the north and south) and Bergman, in contrast, talked about all he had spent on the campaign to date.

Posted by watcher | June 27, 2008 2:17 PM
3

We won't support NO-Bama whatsoever and will re-defeat him in November!!!

Posted by clintonsarmy | June 27, 2008 10:46 PM

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