County conventions in Iowa tomorrow -- Edwards' 14 caucus delegates courted to switch allegiance...

[LiveLiberally]

The Des Moines Register today published an article on the 99 Iowa county conventions taking place tomorrow (3/15). As the second stage in the process to select delegates to the national convention in Denver, Iowa's county conventions could change the official caucus delegate count for Iowa. See below for the first few paragraphs, but the article deals in more detail with Edwards' delegates later on. (The majority of Edwards' delegates, 14 of 26, were won in the Iowa caucuses)


Des Moines Register
March 14, 2008


The process of selecting Iowa's delegates to the Democratic National Convention resumes Saturday at the state's county conventions.

With Barack Obama narrowly ahead of Hillary Clinton in an all-out scrap for national delegates, these typically pro-forma events now have historic interest and new meaning.

The 99 conventions could put one candidate on course for a greater share of Iowa's 57 delegates than was projected on caucus night.
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These conventions are not expected to produce seismic shifts in the presidential nominating race or put either Clinton or Obama on course to win the 2,025 delegates required to secure the nomination.

But in a race that has shifted in the past 10 weeks from a battle for early momentum to a state-by-state war for delegates, the conventions give Iowans another chance to affect the race.

"It's like we're running the caucuses again, just with a smaller number of people," said Tom Henderson, chairman of the Polk County Democratic Party.

For the first time, candidates have hired staff to whip up turnout to county conventions.

Teams of paid and volunteer workers have spent weeks contacting the 13,485 delegates elected on caucus night. In some cases, they are trying to sway those who supported former Sen. John Edwards, who quit the race Jan. 30.


http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080314/NEWS09/803140369/-1/

[Catchawave]

1. There was a good discussion about this on the EENR blog last

night. Some of the delegates weighed in.

http://www.eenrblog.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=351

[mruddy]

2. I can't wait 'til Saturday is over.

I'm an Edwards delegate in Iowa. The phone calls are worse than before the caucus. Mailings haven't been so bad. They're wasting their time.... I'll be making sure Edwards' delegates stay Edwards' delegates!

[LiveLiberally]

3. Bravo ! Thanks for posting this -- made my day! /nt

[mruddy]

4. Edwards' Iowa delegates appear to be staying with him.

Just got back from the county convention where most of Edwards' delegates are holding tuff. We only lost 1 or 2 to other candidates in my county & I call that a success. I think the final tally was something like 5 Obama, 4 Clinton, and 3 Edwards. A friend in a different county called & reported similar results. Most of their Edwards' delegates are staying with him. Hope this is representative of the state as a whole.

Iowa has 2 more conventions - district(April) & state(May). At each we start all over assigning delegates based on a percentage of supporters present for each "preference group". I had to do some serious talking to get nominated but I'm 1 of our county's 3 Edwards' delegates for district. One step closer to Denver!

It did my heart good to see & talk with all the other very determined, die-hard Edwards supporters.

[LiveLiberally]

5. Thanks very much for the update & all your hard work! nt

[emmadoggy]

6. UGH!! I was an Iowa Edwards delegate too and I came away disgusted.

There were at least 2 or 3 Edwards delegates who showed up and signed in for another candidate (Obama) right off the bat, before any realignment or anything!! We needed 12 delegates to be viable and ended up at first count with only 9!! I was so pissed!! This was my first time so I had no clue what to do about it.

I held out and really didn't want to realign for anyone. In the end, I gave up and went to Obama, but I now regret that and wish that I had just abstained.

There was also an issue that came up on the platform voting that just blew me away. It got voted down and some of the comments during the discussion of it were just mind-boggling to me. (It related to Energy/Environment and was specifically about coal plants.) It was the last issue to be voted on and I was so disgusted after that, that I just got the heck out of there ASAP.


:mad: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: