Senate District 7 photos are coming!

If you thought the Texas Democratic precinct caucuses were overwhelming, you knew what to expect with the next level of fun. The “county” convention, or in Texas’ case, the (State) Senate District caucuses were held today, and I was there, snapping photos and witnessing a bit of historic overcrowding.

In general, the mass of Democrats took things in stride. As crowded and as slow to start as it was, all the Democratic faithful showed a great spirit and cheery willingness to put up with the conditions, some of which I’ll go into in a future post.

I took several dozen pictures, and I’ll post many of them very soon.

As you might read in the upper corner of the blog, at the moment I’m doing some server maintenance of note this weekend, and that takes priority.

You might have read my last post on the caucus process, where I played the role of Temporary Precinct Chair to an overcrowded room of caucus goers. I decided on the spur of the moment that, having attended the Senate level as well as the State level conventions in the past, I’d leave that opportunity for others. So, I chose not to attend the Senate District 7 (SD7) as either a delegate or an alternate. As it turns out, I needed a break from this server move business, and thought I’d go anyway, as a Guest.

First off, the map to the SD7 convention was at a community college south of the Galleria — according to the map that was given to all the precincts on the primary election night. That was before the record turnout in the March 4th primary. Those in charge of SD7 had to find a new location — why? Because in prior Democratic primaries, only a fraction of the alloted delegate and alternate slots were committed to. In my precinct, 603, we got to field 14 delegates and 14 alternates. I think the most we ever sent to the Senate convention was eight, and of those, maybe five showed up. Not so much this time, as all 28 delegate/alternate slots were filled.

So, a new location had to be found on short notice. The pavilion at the horse racing track. hmm… Is this like the air conditioned bleachers?
Well, more on that later.

I show up late. Well, late if I was a delegate like in previous conventions. Around 9:45am. For this convention, that was gloriously early.

I’m greeted by a line of hundreds outside the race park gates.

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And it wasn’t moving.

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Now, this all has a happy ending, so don’t despair. But for the crowd of delegates outside, being outside of the convention hall when you’re supposed to be inside has got to be frustrating. But there was nothing to do.

So I went picture taking.

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Fun stuff!

Anyway, more to come.

For more background on today’s convention as well as some conventions that did NOT go as smoothly as SD7’s, here’s an article from the Houston newspaper. [Chron.com]

One of the wildest conventions was Senate District 19 held at a San Antonio warehouse.

When there was a fight over the list and credentials of registered delegates, the warehouse owner threatened to expel the convention. Also, the San Antonio Fire Department cited the convention for overcrowding and finally the delegates voted to abandon the rules. The convention halted at one point so people could move their cars from parking spots reserved for a nearby wedding.