Fighting for Every Texas Delegate

[RiverStone]

Source: time.com

In the compressed, fast-moving primary calendar this election year, the Texas contest of March 4 may seem like ancient history. But since the complicated hybrid voting affair in the Lone Star state involved a caucus as well as a primary, the hotly contested counting of delegates for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is still going on, and this past weekend both campaigns did all they could to try to gain the upper hand.

Across Texas, over 100,000 Democrats gathered Saturday at county conventions — the second tier of the complicated three-step caucus process to select 67 delegates to the national convention. joining the 126 delegates chosen in the primary voting that same day. With her 51% win of the popular vote, Hillary Clinton won 65 delegates to Barack Obama's 61 in the actual primary. But late Saturday, his campaign declared it had 99 total delegates to Clinton's 94. Clinton�s camp dispute that, and by Monday morning it appeared that Obama�s lead had shrunk to three delegates.

From powerful Clinton insiders to the lowliest precinct delegate for Hillary, it was obvious over the weekend that the Clintonites were not going to let Obama tip the scales without a fight. Clinton presidential committee chairman Terry McAuliffe rode frenetically up and down Interstate 35 between Austin and Waco, dropping in on county conventions along the way to spur Hillary's supporters. "She�s in this thing for the long haul. The way I look at it, this thing is basically tied," he told the Waco Tribune.

But while top guns like McAuliffe cajoled, spun and whipped up the crowds in Waco and Austin, the outcome was really up to the foot soldiers at the grassroots level. At one precinct outside Austin, nine of them spent the entire day in an exhausting duel with 16 Obama representatives to choose from amongst themselves two delegates to join more than 7,000 others at the Texas state convention in June, where the 67 delegates headed to Democratic National Convention in Denver in August will be finalized.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1726719,00.html

---

Looks like it's Obama math vs Hillary math. The question is, who is doing the addition? :shrug:

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. McAwful.

'Nough said.

[Skink]

2. 60 percent for Obama

[damntexdem]

5. It was best for the one-delegate precincts -- most of ours sent an Obama delegate, a HRC alternate.

But my district had two delegates to pick, and an 18-13 Obama edge from March 4. But two of our Obama delegates didn't show, allowing a Clinton alternate to be 'elevated,' so we had only a 16-14 edge. Even at 18-13, though, there was going to be a HRC delegate. The important thing was that we strategized to ensure that the first alternate was an Obama supporter (my wife), so that if either delegate failed to go to the state convention, an Obama supporter would be elevated to delegate. Still, our senate district went nearly 75% for Obama, and the county as a whole about 70-30.

[gateley]

3. Interesting article -- thanks.

LIke in most instances, both sides can spin the data to support their side. Always two sides to every issue. Although with numbers, that can only go on for a limited time.

[damntexdem]

4. And in Denton County, 1500 of us met outdoors in a park ...

on a cold, windy, overcast day. The only indoor venues that could have accommodated us were booked or denied to us. And we went about 70-30 for Obama.