Democrats getting do-over after convention disaster

The Democratic presidential campaigns and the Clark County Democratic Party are dusting themselves off from Saturday's botched convention to get ready to do it all over again.

A meeting is expected in the coming days between Clark County Democratic Chairman John Hunt, Hillary Clinton Nevada campaign Chairman Rory Reid and Barack Obama Nevada campaign leader Steven Horsford.

Hunt said Monday he would work more closely with the campaigns than the party had previously, including managing turnout so that an appropriate facility could be reserved.

No date has been set for the new convention, which under the rules could be anytime between March 8 and April 16.

Internally, a date in late March, perhaps the 22nd, was being floated as a possibility, depending on available facilities. The Thomas & Mack Center, Cashman Center and the Las Vegas Convention Center were being explored as possible venues.

Plenty of recriminations lingered Monday, many of them directed at Hunt, who has taken a beating over the party's failure to plan for circumstances it had anticipated, in particular high turnout.

Hunt, however, was confident he's the man to pull off a second effort. He said he has no plans to step aside or hold a confidence vote on his leadership.

"As my dad used to say, never mind what they're doing; what are you doing?" he said of his critics.

Saturday's county convention was to have been the next step toward selecting Nevada's delegates to the Democratic National Convention after the Jan. 19 caucuses.

The caucuses were party meetings where each candidate collected delegates to the county conventions. Of the more than 10,000 delegates apportioned statewide, about 7,500 of them in Clark County, 51 percent were for Clinton, 45 percent for Obama.

Those delegates' job was to go to their county conventions, held Saturday, and elect a smaller number of delegates to the state convention, scheduled to be held in Reno in May. Delegates there will elect 25 delegates from Nevada to the August national convention in Denver.

That means the campaigns have to get their delegates to show up at each step of the process, or risk having the math turn against them. But the campaigns didn't know who all their delegates were. In some cases, the paperwork that was supposed to be filled out at the caucuses was unclear or incomplete; in others it was missing, meaning alternates would have to fill in. And so the Clinton and Obama camps put out word to all the caucus-goers, about 77,000 people in Clark County, that their presence was needed at the convention.

The county party had reserved a room at Bally's that could hold about 5,000 people. At least twice that number showed up. When thousands, including many delegates, had to be turned away, the convention was shut down over fears its results wouldn't be seen as legitimate.

"In the zeal of each of the campaigns to protect their delegate positions, they contacted every single person that had gone to the caucus and told them to go to the convention," Hunt said.

Hunt said the party did everything it could with limited resources, a limited time frame and delays getting information from the caucuses from the state Democratic Party. Party insiders, however, said Hunt previously resisted other counties' proposal that the conventions be held later.

Horsford, a Las Vegas state senator, said the campaigns were doing their job: to turn out their supporters and protect their delegates. "To deflect that on anyone else other than those involved is just unfortunate," he said.

Both campaigns need to be "at the table" to put on the next convention and remove barriers to participation, Horsford said. "Democracy is hard, but it shouldn't be this hard."

Reid said better communication and a more convenient way for people to vote would be crucial to the do-over.

"We owe an apology to a lot of Democrats who spent the day and either got in and then couldn't vote, or were barred from the room and couldn't vote," the Clark County commissioner said. "We will work together with the Obama campaign and the county party to make sure it doesn't happen again. We need to do what we can to protect people's right to have their voices heard."

University of Nevada, Las Vegas, political scientist David Damore said the aborted convention was an embarrassment for the party and that Hunt, a local attorney and onetime attorney general candidate, deserved most of the blame.

He noted that the county party's November Jefferson-Jackson dinner at Paris Las Vegas suffered similar problems: overwhelming turnout, misplaced paperwork, a too-small room and delays.

Though run by state party, not the county party, the Jan. 19 caucuses, which saw higher-than-expected turnout and concomitant chaos, also should have been a harbinger, he said.

"They should have looked at that and said, 'Maybe some people are actually going to want to come to these conventions. Maybe we should get a room to hold all these people.' It's like they didn't believe their own hype. 'Oh, we're fired up, but we're not actually expecting anyone to show up.'"

The result, Damore said, "confirms what everybody feared about Nevada getting this prominent role" in the presidential election.

"They have a golden opportunity to realign Nevada politics for the near term, but they could squander it," he said. "This goodwill and grass-roots energy is a finite resource."

Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball@reviewjournal.com or (702) 387-2919.