Well, I have been mostly silent on here for the past month or two. I am going through a lot of transitions in my life over the summer moving back to Ohio to take care of my mother. A great many of you are familiar with my work on profiling districts in Virginia for the House of Delegates elections this fall. Part of that work brought me in contact with a large number of wonderful people stepping up to run as candidates, leading indivisible groups and other activists teams as well as a few people filling roles in the party infrastructure as committee members and chairs.
I did not have the good fortune to connect with Zack Pruckowski, but, after interacting with him a bit on a comment thread earlier today, I am willing to rise in defense of him and his leadership as Chair, 10th Congressional District Democratic Committee, Democratic Party of Virginia.
The Back Story
David Nir posts about insider shenanigans in the VA 10th.
Apparently, Politico ran a story about how party insiders are trying to do an end run around the normal primary process to pick the nominee to contest Barbara Comstock. David’s post is pretty damning from headline to story:
Bogus: Virginia Democrats consider eliminating primary in favor of a convention for key House race
Well, this is garbage...Democratic leaders in the district are suggesting they might do an end-run around democracy by eliminating next year's Democratic primaryand instead pick a nominee at a party convention,
Pretty alarming stuff right? A little pressure from a heavyweight like Nir here on Kos might do some good to rectify this situation. I mean David’s piece goes on:
What makes this even more distressing is that this potential move might be aimed at helping one candidate in particular, state Sen. Jennifer Wexton.
So not only was a distressing accusation made, a devious motive was given by David. I was like “what the hell”. I hopped on to add my voice to the outrage. I mean this is ridiculous, right? Damn right it is
The thing is…
I read through the comment section. I quickly learned that things are not what they seem according to this article. It appears Politico took a tape of a meeting and cherry-picked portions of a debate and a subsequent interview they did with the Chair of the district, Zach.
Here is my summation Zach’s explanation for all of this, found in the comment thread on Dave’s post.
- The VA 10th usually does not have more than one Democrat seeking the nomination to run for this seat, so typically this nomination process has normally been handled at the convention. So right off the bat the Politico byline on this story “Democrats weigh convention instead of primary in top House battleground,” by Robillard is strongly misleading as if they were contemplating deviating from the norm. The norm in this district HAS been the convention. This fact makes David’s construct even worse “Democratic leaders in the district are suggesting they might do an end-run around democracy by eliminating next year's Democratic primary and instead pick a nominee at a party convention,”
- Zach was elected Chair of this committee on the promise of running an open and transparent committee process.
- Given his role and the committee's responsibility for this district, Zach decided to hold a public discussion on the nomination process. In preparation for this discussion, Zach researched the methods available by Virginia law and Virginia Democratic Party rules.
- The options allowed by law and party rules include the following:
- Open primary (Virginia has no partisan registration).
- Convention selection (the made up controversy here).
- Party Run Caucuses
- Mass Meeting (get everyone who turns up in one room and keep them there until a candidate is selected).
- Firehouse Primary (the party runs an election at multiple locations throughout the district where Democrats can turn up to vote throughout the day).
- The 45-minute meeting where these options were discussed was recorded (the reporter used the recording for their story apparently). Every option was discussed, the pros and cons weighed. This IS how a committee process ought to work. All the options should be researched, discussed and understood before any vote is taken.
- The meeting on Sunday was an educational meeting on the issue of selecting a nominee about the different avenues available to the committee as the responsible party. This committee is simply doing its job in a thoughtful, transparent and methodical way.
- The next phase is to leave this open to a public comment period spanning two months time, whereupon the committee will reconvene and take a vote.
Why I wrote this up
Zach deserves our respect and support. Once it was made clear what was happening here, and that the Politico post spun this horribly beyond what it was, I feel Nir should have at least updated his post to reflect Zach’s and the committee’s thinking here. Fully explain the process and aims of the committee.
Instead, this story has been recycled again on the front page through the Kos Elections morning digest. Dragging this great committee through the mud once more. I get it, Kos believes that Primaries are the only way to pick nominees. Heck, I tend to agree, but this committee is not trying to do an “ end run around Democracy” they are fulfilling their duty to educate, deliberate and decide.
These important volunteers should be applauded for their hard work and dedication to an open process. Further, Kos should seek to defend local committees from unfair reporting or political attacks percolated up through the media, not piling on.
I get it when I first read what was not behind the paywall at Politico I was with David. Once I heard from the Chair of the Committee, read through his explanations, well I felt the need to rise in his defense.
Not only should this committee work be defended, this should be an exemplar of committee behavior at all levels across the entire country for the Democratic Party.
David Nir and Kos Elections should correct the record here, and frankly, I believe an apology is due, particularly now this has been recycled through the front page even after an explanation of the process was provided.
What is happening in Virginia is exciting, we need to rally behind them and support them.
Friday, Sep 15, 2017 · 11:38:01 PM +00:00
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pdxbuckeye
Here is a formal response I found on social media:
Democratic Friends,
There's been a lot of discussion and controversy about our most recent meeting, so we'd like to take the opportunity set the record straight about our most recent meeting, and about where discussions of the nominating process stand.
The Virginia Democrats' State Party Plan instructs the 10th CD Committee to pick the nominating method for the Congressional race and gives us 4 options to pick from - a Convention, an Assembled Caucus (Mass Meeting), an Unassembled Caucus (Firehouse Primary), or a State-Run Primary. All of these methods have been used for different races in the 10th CD over the last few years, and there is no "default" choice - every time there's a nomination, some committee somewhere discusses which method to use, and votes.
In the past, these discussions haven't been fully transparent to our activists, volunteers, and voters in the Democratic community, and that's something we'd like to change. Because we believe in leading by example, we held a 45 minute discussion at our public meeting on Saturday where we debated the pros and cons of each method. Then we decided to go back to our local Democratic communities and talk to our fellow activists before voting at our November meeting (which again, will be open to the public). We also wanted to do more research, because that public discussion raised questions we don't have immediate answers for. We're currently only 6 days into that two month process.
There've been some claims that the race in the past has been a primary and we're taking that away. The last three or four cycles have in fact been conventions, and none of them were contested.
We're going to have a lot more info for you on the pros and cons of each method over the coming weeks. We're all volunteer leaders who're also working hard to elect our 2017 candidates, so we ask for your patience if it takes us some time to do the research and writeups and pass it along to you - we're doing our best to be transparent and frank with you, our friends and fellow Democrats.
This committee isn't made up of "party elites", we're all volunteers and activists. We all make phone calls and knock on doors and show up at protests. We go to the same local committee and group meetings you do. If you're an active Dem volunteer in VA-10, you've probably met at least one of us. Feel free to talk to us there and give us your thoughts.
Respectfully,
Zach Pruckowski,
Chair, 10th CD Democratic Committee