This just in, from a Field correspondent in San Antonio, Texas (name of delegate deleted). Both the delegate and the source to whom she reported are known to me and are of the highest ethics: I trust them not to embellish. You can see that the report is even-handed and sticks to the known facts.
It includes an eye witness report from the caucus convention in Senate District 26, plus second-hand information on similar tactics in Senate District 19.
San Antonio favored Clinton, including in the caucuses, and is where the political machine of former mayor (and HUD secretary) Henry Cisneros operates. This report includes back-room deals prior to and during the event, the stacking the convention committee chairs ahead of time with Clinton operatives, the taking of Obama delegates off the voter rolls, holding a meeting before its scheduled time to lock out Obama delegates, and, get this… suspending the senate district caucus for the rest of the day - before voting - to, no doubt, reconvene the session at whatever hour they estimate they can gain maximum advantage.
Here’s the report:
(The Obama delegate) got there to discover a backroom deal had already been cut by Democratic Party leaders in the county, presumably, to set up the rules committees 50/50 Clinton/Obama people, but all the committee chairs are Clinton people.
Clinton’s campaign has sent a bunch of “at large” delegates to the Sen. 26 caucus to hang out in the event someone doesn’t show up at the right time, so they can step in as delegates. (The Obama delegate) is not certain if the Obama folks are doing the same thing, but she said she had not heard of this practice from the folks she’s dealing with on the Obama side.
Somehow, none of the Obama delegates from our precinct are listed on the rolls, so they have all been categorized as provisional for the caucus. She’s not certain if the Clinton delegates from our precinct suffered the same fate. She said this is strange because someone on the Obama side said they saw all the names entered onto the rolls.
In Senate District 19, she was told, the Clinton people called a meeting to set up rules for the caucus at an appointed time, but then showed up early. When the Obama people showed up at the appointed time, the Clinton people adjourned the meeting. (The Obama delegate) said it turned into somewhat of a racial thing since most of the Clinton people were Hispanic and most of the Obama people were black.
She said it’s truly smoke-filled backroom politics, with a lot of confusion for those who aren’t invited into the backroom. She got there early this morning and it’s expected to last until 8 pm or so tonight. If the delegates aren’t in place at the pricise moment to cast their votes, too bad. The Ceasar Chavez march is today, so the Clinton people managed to get an adjournment of the caucus until the march is over, so they can go to the march. Let’s hope that wasn’t a ploy.
Update: Whatever tactics the Clinton campaign is using today, they haven’t seemed to help it in the three small counties that have just reported their caucus results. According to the Burnt Orange Report (the go-to place to get today’s caucus convention results from Texas), San Augustine County in the east, Moore County in the North and Edwards County in the Border-Valley region have their results in and the number of delegates being sent to the state convention are: Obama 25, Clinton 23.
That’s verrrryyyy interesting because here are the primary results from those counties, according to CNN’s nifty little county-by-county primary results map:
San Augustine County: Clinton 53 percent, Obama 35
Moore County: Clinton 64 percent, Obama 33
Edwards County: Clinton 55 percent, Obama 41
So, Clinton won those counties in the primary by 18, 21 and 14 point landslides respectively, but still lost the overall delegate battle in today’s county caucuses. If that trend continues statewide, put on your seatbelts for another game-changing moment.
Again, those are just three caucus conventions out of 284 statewide, but from three distinct regions, each of which Obama lost in the primary, but where he appears to be winning today.
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