Rep. Allen Boyd - Or How I Learned to Stop Complaining and Love the Blue Dogs

From Alan Brock:

First, What is a Blue Dog Democrat? Wikipedia defines Blue Dog Democrats as social and economic conservatives and moderates in the United States Democratic Party, tending to be economic populist and social conservatives. Often a Blue Dog Democrat supports the Democratic Parties social programs (Social Security) but not all of the social issues (Pro-life instead of pro-choice). But as always, the Democratic Party is a big tent and you find different levels of support among the Congressional Blue Dogs for different conservative issues; they don't necessarily have set issues or a platform that they all agree on.

If you read the link in the Title Bar you will read an article from the Tallahassee Democrats that discusses these Blue Dog Democrats. They aren't these DINOs (Democrats In Name Only) that some people treat them as, they are strong Democrats who work hard to help further the Democratic Agenda. All but one of the Blue Dogs vote the party line over two thirds of the time!

Congressman Boyd does an Excellent job at representing our expansive and diverse district, stretching from the cost of Walton County deep into the northern section of our state (to Suwannee, Lafayette and Dixie, and I would be glad to bet that as long as he wants the seat it is his). District 2 is one more safe Democrat Seat in the Congress and when we only have 202 of the 435 seats it is important that we hold onto every one that we can.

Why am I bringing this up today? Because more and more people keep sharing with me their displeasure with Rep. Boyd's voting record and especially his stance on Social Security. Thanks to several commercials that ran in constant rotation here in Tallahassee we know that Rep. Boyd is the only Democrat who activity supports private accounts for Social Security. This is similar to what President Bush talks about all the time, but it isn't the President's plan. I called Rep. Boyd's office in DC to make sure that I understood Rep. Boyd's stance on Social Security. Rep. Boyd DOES NOT support the president's plan. His office told me one of the main reasons that Rep. Boyd doesn't support the President's plan is "because the president doesn't have a plan". The administration keeps spouting rhetoric instead of developing an actual plan. Representative Boyd is supporting a bipartisan bill that has been out there since 1996, and he has been a co-sponsor since 1999. There are foreseeable problems with social security and he has been politically brave enough to try and develop a system to preserve a program that many of us take for granted or at least want to take for granted when it is time for us to retire.

I have had a lot of people tell me that they feel that we should run someone against Rep. Boyd, or that he 'should just go ahead and switch parties'. This frustrates me, I cannot imagine how it must make the representative feel. He is a proud Democrat. Rep.Boyd has sided with the Republicans/conservatives on some issues, but if he got frustrated and decide that he no longer wanted to deal with the complainers and decide to take the foolish advice of switching parties (and I am sure that there have been enticing offers)....Then he wouldn't vote with the Democrats at all any longer. He is a good man and he votes the party line when he needs to, he helps ensure that our important issues get passed.

I am glad that our Congressman is a Democrat, one that does an excellent job of representing his North Florida District and I will continue to vote for Allen Boyd as long as he wants to be our Democratic Congressman.

How to become chair of the Florida Democratic Party

So, I have been asked by several members how one becomes chair of the Florida Democratic Party. I am going to try to explain the process as succinctly as possible in this entry today. Wish me luck.

The first step to becoming chair of the Florida Democratic Party (FDP) is to become qualified.

First you must be a registered Democrat.

Secondly you have to be a voting member of your local Democratic Executive Committee (DEC). Every county can have a DEC for a person to join, this is done either by election in your precinct during the Democratic Primary or by appointment by your county's DEC, or the state party's, Chair.

Then, you must be elected to one of the qualified officer positions. Each DEC will have at least 6 officers: Chair, Vice-Chair, State Committeeman, State Committeewoman, Secretary and treasurer. Sometimes a DEC has more, rarely does it have less. Of these 6 officers, 4 are able to run for party offices on the statewide level: the Chair, the Vice-Chair and the State Committeepeople. You are probably familiar with the roles of Chair and Vice Chair from other organizations that you have been associated with in the past, the role of the State Committeepeople is to serve on the State Executive Committee which helps provide direction to the state party, they are the liaisons from the county DEC to the State Party, and vice-versa.

So, for instance in Leon County the DEC Chair Scott Maddox, the Vice-Chair Monica O'Neil, the State Committeewoman Roxane Dow and State Committeeman Jon Ausman are all eligible to be chair of the FDP. If there is someone else in Leon County who wanted to be chair that person would have to convince one of those four people to resign and then get elected to their post. This is what the current FDP Chair (Scott Maddox) did several years ago. If your county will not support you then you must move to another county where you have the support to get yourself appointed and elected into one of their key post.

Once you are qualified at the local level you must go before the State Executive Committee (SEC). There they will vote and the qualified person who gets the most votes will win. There isn't a primary process, it is a simple plurality of votes. The trick to this part of the process is that the SEC is not a one person one vote organization, it is a lot like the electoral college. Each State Executive Committee member has a weighted vote based of the percentage and performance of the local democrats in their county compared to the total number and performance of democrats statewide. So small rural counties get one vote for each of their state committee people and large democratic counties get much larger weighted votes. 36 of the 67 counties are allocated 3 or fewer votes per state committeeperson. The rest fall somewhere between 4 and 62 votes each. To give you an idea of where the votes fall check out this list of some of the larger counties state committee people's votes weight:

Alachua 09
Seminole 10
Sarasota 11
Lee 12
Leon 12
Pasco 12
Polk 14
Brevard 15
Volusia 16
Duval 25
Orange 25
Pinellas 29
Hillsborough 31
Palm Beach 42
Miami Dade 53
Broward 62

So each of those counties has two state commiteepeople with that number of votes each. There are also a few other people with votes on the SEC. Each Federal representative gets four votes, the house and senate leaders get 20 votes as does our senator Bill Nelson. There are other allotments for each of our statewide elected cabinet positions, but currently we don't have any, plus a few chair appointments and automatic appointments for friends of the FDP and caucus leadership each get 1 vote.

There are 1131 Votes out there, and the State Committeepeople from the large counties that I listed represent well over half (816 to be exact, or a little over 70%). Some of the smaller counties won't come to the election because the weighted vote from Voulsia through Broward counties alone represent over 50% of the vote, and if they join together then they are unbeatable.

But this may not happen this time. Currently the State Executive Committee will be meeting on May 7th in Orlando to elect a new state party chair. There are four people who are running, and each of them bring varied county support. Rep. Karen Thurman has a lot of support out of central and north Florida. FDP Vice Chair is the state committeewoman from Broward, and with her state committeeman have more votes than any other single person on the state committee. Jeff Ryan the director of the House Victory campaign for the FDP, has the committed support of the Leon County State Committee People and of the many elected officials who he has helped to obtain their seat, but he has not yet qualified as one of the four positions that allow a person to run for chair, and the last person who has expressed interest in running is Doug Courtney the former Chair of the Democratic Small County Coalition. The large counties have split their support among these four people which makes each vote more valuable.

Hopefully this will provide you with some insight into the election process of the FDP Chair. You can now see why no one can predict who will be elected as chair on the 7th.

Also worth noting ~ this weighted vote system is also the way that the at-large delegates to the National Convention in the Presidential Election Cycle are elected. So if, in three years, you want to be a delegate to the DNCC it is worth building a relationship with the larger counties now.

Marla Ruzicka

Rock the vote sent out an email today about Marla Ruzicka. She has spent the last year in Iraqi trying to help those people who need help. She was one of the people killed in the car bombings earlier this week. I have linked to the NY Times story in the title bar that overviews her short life.

I had not her of Ms. Ruzicka prior to this article, but it is important to realize how many young people are working around the world to try and help people. Here is a brief excerpt from the article, describing Ms. Ruzicka:

"With a cellphone (that she had a tendency to misplace), a backpack and an apparent genius for working with very different types of individuals and organizations, she would head off to the most dangerous spots on the globe, determined to bring aid and comfort to the afflicted, wherever she found them. This meant, of course, that her constituency was impossibly large. The world is filled with people who have nowhere to turn."

I commend her for being brave enough to help. Don't forget that Ross's friend, Tilli, is in Sri Lanka helping to rebuild after the tsunami. If you would like to help Tilli rebuild homes for displaced families check the yahoo group archives for more information or email/contact Ross.

Separated at Birth?

Tom DeLay

Steve Spurrier

Earth Day/Wakulla Wildlife Festival

The Leon County Young Democrats will be volunteering for Earth Day at the Wakulla Wildlife Festival at the Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park this Saturday, April 23, 2005. Volunteer times are from 9 to around 3. You will only be expected to work for 2-3 hours so that our volunteers can also enjoy the festival while they're at the park. Click on the link for more information on the festival and directions to the park.

There wil be several conservation/environmental organizations (i.e., Audubon Society, St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge) participating in the festival that we will have the chance to help out and connect with for future volunteer opportunities. This will be our official Earth Day service project for the Young Democrats, however, I know of several other events going on in the area that individuals can participate in. If you are interested in volunteering for the festival with the LCYD's, or you would like information on other events in the area, please post a comment to this blog or contact me ASAP at cwfetrow@yahoo.com