Although she was selected as an alternate delegate to the Democratic National Convention, 18-year-old Chelsea Ayres of Wichita got to the floor today.
Her own credential is good enough to get her into Denver’s Pepsi Center, but not enough to get her all the way to where the full voting delegates do their thing.
But she was able to exchange passes with Pat Lehman, who is recovering from surgery and wanted to rest during the early hours of Monday’s proceedings.
Not only did Ayres get on the floor, she also temporarily held Lehman’s position as one of two “whips” for presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama. Read More »
DENVER — When Sen. Ted Kennedy took the stage at the Democratic National Convention Monday night, it was a special moment for one Kansas delegate.
“To me, personally, it is tremendous,” said Pat Lehman, who was a delegate for Kennedy in 1980 when he lost the party’s nomination to Jimmy Carter. Later, she met with him regularly in her work as a national labor activist for the Machinists Union.
“He has been such a champion of working people,” said Lehman. “He really was the public’s senator and he has been all these years.”
But she said she came to admire the Massachusetts senator not just as a politician, but as a human being. Read More »
DENVER – Kansas delegates to the Democratic National Convention got a pep talk this morning on how to win elections against the odds. Their teacher was a Democratic governor from a once-Republican-dominated and now divided state, Montana.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer walked the delegates through a list of tactics Democrats used in winning the governor’s office and a U.S. Senate seat, in a state that hasn’t voted Democratic in a presidential election since Lyndon Johnson.
Describing Montana as “a small town with a long Main Street,” he said the keys to winning are maximizing personal contact with voters while aggressively fighting Republican efforts to suppress turnout in Democratic precincts. Read More »
Although she was selected as an alternate delegate to the Democratic National Convention, 18-year-old Chelsea Ayres of Wichita got to the floor today.