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ALEGRE'S CORNER
We're not finished folks - not by a long shot!

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Federal Ruling Favors Latino Texans!

by: Pacific John

Wed Aug 26, 2009 at 17:35:45 PM EDT


( - promoted by masslib)

Great news just came in my email from a superstar Tejano Democrat:

Ruling favors Latino voters in Texas Democrat suit
AP

By PAUL J. WEBER, Associated Press Writer Paul J. Weber, Associated Press Writer - Tue Aug 25, 4:18 pm ET

SAN ANTONIO - Latino voters [sic] celebrated a federal court ruling Tuesday that came down against the Texas Democratic Party and could put the complicated "Texas Two-step" presidential delegate system in jeopardy.

The ruling by a three-judge panel will allow the lawsuit to go forward and put the Texas delegate system closer to facing a potential review by the Justice Department, which Latino advocates sought in the aftermath of last year's intense Democratic primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In a lawsuit filed last year, the Latino groups argued that the way Texas Democrats awarded presidential delegates unfairly discriminated against Latinos by awarding fewer presidential delegates to heavily Hispanic areas. They did not contest to whom the delegates were awarded, but rather how the allotment was made.

Latino advocates saw Tuesday's ruling as clearing the way for the party's complex process of awarding delegates through a primary and caucus to be done away with entirely.

"The whole state of Texas should be celebrating with us," said Luis Roberto Vera Jr., an attorney for the League of United Latin American Citizens. "That was the biggest, most chaotic, moronic thing when they went through that Texas two-step."

Pacific John :: Federal Ruling Favors Latino Texans!
I put the [sic] in to fix the AP style: all small "d" democrats are celebrating this!

Frankly, I'm stunned that the courts would jump in the middle of party rules even though they do award caucasian Austin more than twice the delegates per citizen than in the Hispanic districts in San Antonio and along the Rio Grande: The party rewards past performance so Austin got 7 DNC delegates while overwhelmingly Hispanic El Paso with a similar size got 3. Of course, this IS Texas, so it might be a good idea to make sure institutional racism or its appearance is cast out of the state party.

I spent months working with Texans on the campaign, first on the ground in El Paso, then on caucus fraud and irregularities, then with Texan networks through Denver. I can say, this is the best news we've had in over a year.

While I was working on a documentary, I also had the pleasure of becoming friends with two great Democrats, Carl Davis and Roy Laverne Brooks, the first two African Americans to be top officers in the TDP. It probably isn't a surprise that they might have a thing or two to say about institutional racism.

What I learned from Roy, Carl, and the Dem stalwarts in South and West Texas was the party has cynically used race to pit Hispanics and African Americans against each other, and successfully minimized the power of both. Get this, Vice Chair Brooks ran to unseat white good old boy Boyd Richie. In a year when our first African American candidate was on the way to the presidency, a highly popular African American woman was effectively not allowed to run for office. Let that sink in.

According to Brooks, she ran on a platform of reforming caucuses so she could enfranchise the sort of voters who are the subject of the LULAC suit, but was the subject of a wave of abuse from the good old boys and the Obama campaign, who had traded endorsements. Richie would endorse Obama before the state convention in the heat of the allegations of irregularities and the Obama campaign would support Richie over his African American challenger. Brooks, a superdelegate who had endorsed Obama, was threatened with having her DNC credentials stripped if she carried out her campaign for office. At the Austin convention, Vice Chair Brooks' state convention credentials were "lost" for something like 7 hours so she could not even enter the venue to campaign.

In interviews for the film, I kept hearing the same disheartening complaint, that caucuses were invented to favor the white male insiders already in power, and the system this year did nothing to change the dynamic. The irony was not lost that Barack Obama's coldly exploitative caucus machine would use an artifact of institutional racism to disenfranchise other minorities.

So, wow. I've said no one goes to jail for what happens in a caucus, but this might be the next best thing, the courts directing the Justice Department to dismantle what amounts a discriminatory invitation for wholesale vote theft.

Fingers crossed. This is an excellent step.

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This is an excellent development! (4.00 / 8)
Let it serve as a lesson to the DNC as they go through the motions of revising the 2012 primary rules.  Maybe they will now start taking seriously the notion of one person, one vote.

Wouldn't that be quaint?!


Very quaint (4.00 / 9)
But we need an outside force like the courts to force something fair.

You have to realize, all the committees on all the state parties are packed with Obama people, and in a state like Texas, the very people who voted in committee to ignore Hillary voters' complaints of vote theft, and ratify fake Obama voters, are the people setting the rules.

In Texas, the caucus process, that is supposed to be a party building exercise drawing new activists into local campaigns, actually turned out to be ineffective. An primary election that drew perhaps 1,000,000 caucusers was followed by a general election in which there were no Democrats to win statewide office. When the great Hillary supporter, the late AG Jim Mattox testified to this, he could have been a skunk in the room. The Texas caucus process failed at its publicly stated excuse for being because it alienated rather than enfranchised newly active Democrats.

But officials backing Obama at the TDP caucus reform hearings believe the caucuses were affirmed by the outcome in November. The guy who got the nomination from a 20% or so systematic boost over what have happened in legally administered state primaries won the presidency.

Good thing no one was killed, or they would be writing legalized murder in the party platform.


[ Parent ]
Great news (4.00 / 4)
Pacific John,

Thank you for the report.  I am sure that the diversity-first Obama administration will applaud this ruling?

Caucuses need to go.

TD


Great news. (4.00 / 3)
I hope it forces the party to do some reforms. I guess we shall see.

no faith here (4.00 / 2)
as a tx dem myself who worked for hillary dont get your hopes up. this ruling is a step but if it goes to the supremes im not sure. courts  dont meddle in party stuff often. maybe theyw ill here but the supremes almost killed lbj's voting act 3 months ago. the court are filled with the horrid right and i have little fiath in them. if the surpmee court can do a coup in 2000 and disenfranchise thousands of blacks lets jsut say my confidence in thes efolks is low.  

Texan, I agree... (4.00 / 2)
But this should embarrass the Party enough they take it upon themselves to reform the process.  And, it's a validation to what we all said was happening, disfranchisement.

Medicare for All is Civil Rights

[ Parent ]
i think it may be changed (4.00 / 1)
i hope u are right! most dems here want it changed. most. in 2010 the conv takes it up

[ Parent ]
There are too many moving parts in something like this... (4.00 / 5)
... to predict the outcome. If the TDP controlled the process, the outcome would be 100% certain, but once federal courts with partisan judges from the other party get involved, there might be fireworks. Stranger things have happened than for Republicans to discover civil rights when they have a chance to humiliate a genuinely corrupt Dem state party.

But I do agree, it's still very unlikely that the right thing will happen.


[ Parent ]
I've lived in Texas most of my life and voted Democrat (4.00 / 2)
forever.  The TDP has always been corrupt but it stinks too much now to leave alone.

[ Parent ]
The really sick thing is... (4.00 / 1)
a lot of new activists think this is all okay.  

[ Parent ]
hmmm (0.00 / 0)
it is very clear-the supremes almost never intervene in partisan processes ie redistricting u know. except in 2000 of course. roberts will toss the case flat out. then again kennedy may side witht he 4 court libs and take it up. i expect little.


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