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DEL.ICIO.USGeorgia Democrats have a minor gender issue
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Democratic National Committee has found Georgia to be one of nine states that is out of compliance with party rules on the demographic make-up of its delegation to the national convention.
The party has complicated goals states should meet to ensure diversity in the delegations. But there are also hard rules that say the three standing committees to the national convention have equal number of men and women. And that’s where Georgia’s issue is.
The state party has four seats on each of the three standing committees, which are Rules, Platform and Credentials. Martin Matheny, spokesman for the Georgia Democratic Party, said the problem appears to be that there are three women and one man from Georgia on the Rules Committee, and three men and one woman on Credentials.
The issue, Matheny said, came about because the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns dictated who they wanted on which committee. So, Matheny said, the party is working with the campaigns to get one woman and one man switched before the convention in August.
— Aaron Gould Sheinin
Jim Galloway is on vacation. If you’ve got news, pop an e-mail to our political team: editor Susan Abramson at sabramson@ajc.com; staffers Aaron Sheinin at asheinin@ajc.com; James Salzer at jsalzer@ajc.com; Ben Smith at bsmith@ajc.com; and Jim Tharpe at jtharpe@ajc.com.
Comments
By sayitain'tso
June 26, 2008 12:20 PM | Link to this
Well of course the Georgia Party has problems with their convention delegation—no one up there knows what they are doing. the whole staff is new and the Party’s ED has a know it all attitude. I guess he didn’t know this and now wants to blame the campaigns
By betty boop
June 26, 2008 2:29 PM | Link to this
Betty is not surprised. When candidates are given the final say over the activities of the State Party, it seems a bit topsy turvy to me. After all, they are candidates, not nominees at that point and I think they ought not to interfere with State Committees and State Parties, leaving it to the DNC to address any blatant inequities if same should occur. A lot of good, honest dems were omitted from any chance to run their merits for a seat as a delegate or on a committee. These people had nothing against them except perhaps that they had not made substantial contributions to either candidate — they were simply arbitrarily removed from the ballot. They were angry and frankly, Betty knows that many State Committee Members were angry that they were called on a holiday weekend to attend a meeting to rubber-stamp the candidates choices. Not the Democratic Way at All.
Betty Boop says we can stand up to this and we ought to.
Betty Boop