Bay Area Houston

Mike Collier is our nominee for Texas Lt Governor against Dan Patrick. His video below is really good. At first I thought the sound was not synced with the visual. It took me a bit to understand that I’m Mike Collier.

This was a great convention. Lets start with the funny.

Texas State Representative “Little Baby” Briscoe Cain thrown out of the convention
The convention security tossed Briscoe Cain for showing off his gun inside the convention area. We also had a Hearst with a RIP sign for the Democratic Party parked outside. Both were childish moves with Baby Briscoe being escorted out by his mother pulling him by the ear. You could hear Briscoe yelling “mom! mom! you are embarrassing me!” throughout the convention center. 😁

The Good.
Overall this was a great convention with nearly 8000 delegates in an off year. Lots of new faces. The Convention Center is a great place with ample meeting rooms, although the Environment Caucus and Stop Gun Violence needed rooms twice the size. Their crowds were much larger than expected. The TDP staff should be thanked for a smooth convention. Food was convention food but there were good restaurants nearby. The music played during the session was upbeat and modern. Good choices! The opening videos were great especially Mike Collier’s “I’m Mike Collier” and MJ Hegar’s video, Doors, that has gone viral. The multimedia was well done. Audio, lighting, etc was all well done. There were fantastic speeches both days with many standing ovations. Delegates left energized. 

Chair
Gilberto Hinojosa was re-elected as Chair of the Texas Democratic Party. Good choice. He was a clear winner by voice vote.

No mention of trump
As I said before, the Party focused on the many issues facing Texans including health care, jobs, immigration and many more. Trumps name was mentioned a total of 5 times. Anyone who says “The Democrats have to run on something beside attacking trump” was not listening or doesn’t want to listen.

Family First Rally
The TDP held a very well attended Family First Rally in support of the immigrant children separated from their parents. State Representative Mary Ann Perez summed it up best “We are better than this!”. She is right. The issue was referenced throughout the convention.

The Silence
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee gave another great speech on the floor. She played the audio of the immigrant children crying for their parents. The convention floor stopped and it went silent. You could hear a pin drop. It was very disturbing but moving.

The Vice-Chair
There was a brief controversy about the race between Carla Brailey , the current Vice-Chair, Debra Peoples, and Rose Salas. All were well qualified for the position. Peoples and Salas eventually withdrew calling for unity within the party. I think it work. Carla Brailey is our Vice-Chair.

No LaRouche
The LaRouche cult forgot to show up. That was good. Really good. The newbie were not subjected to their random singing fits and calls for impeachment of their elected official of choice.

The Bad
We had the usual controversy from the far left, calling for a division of the house after a clear winner was determined by voice vote, challenging the chair, but nothing that couldn’t be handled by the Parliamentarian. There were no unresolved controversies.

Vendors
At least 3 vendors were allowed into our convention that shouldn’t have been there. A gun nut organization, a school voucher group, and a constitutional convention group. I wrote about them here. You have to wonder what the rationale was for letting them on our floor.

The prayer
A Catholic priest gave the prayer for the closing general session. Unlike the previous day the priest referenced Christianity too many times to a group of delegates committed to the freedom of religion. He incorrectly claimed the founding fathers created our governing documents according to the Christian religion. We shook it off quickly.

Our revolution
This group continues to bother me. When your house is on fire you shouldn’t complain about the color of the curtains. Grab a bucket and help put out the fire! The caucus had too many people saying “Give our party back to the people”. (Who has it?) Our party does NOT need a revolution. We need people to quit complaining and start helping.

Read the rules
Do us all a favor. Before the next convention, read the rules of the party. It would help move the convention along.

After about 30 minutes of discussion on how SDEC Committee members are elected Susan Criss was elected for the female position and Quentin Wiltz was elected as the male member.

With new fresh members of the district attending, the usual way of electing our SDEC members will probably end in 2020. The best man and woman from the entire district needs to campaign and win the election. Our district needs to expand, grow and our SDEC members and chairs need to make this happen. We desperately need communications across the district and we need to unite as one district and not as 3 constantly competing against each other based upon where we live. It needs to stop.

I have offered to help with setting up an email list, Facebook page and/or a webpage. Other districts have it. We need to do the same.

Congrats to Susan and Quentin.

Well when someone says “The Democrats have to run on something beside attacking trump” you should tell them “You are full of crap!”.

Ok. Don’t say that but the point is that I don’t think I heard trumps name during any presentation I attended. No one called him politically ignorant, even though he is. No one called his a liar, even. though he is. No one called him a lying racist, even though he proved that this past week. And no one called his an asshole even though we they wanted to. No one, except me, called trump a politically ignorant, lying, racist, asshole of a human being. No one came close. In fact I do not believe his name was even mentioned.

Instead they talked about the issues everyone should be concerned with, immigration and healthcare are just two of the many. The Stop Gun Violence caucus was over flowing the large room allocated to them. The Environment Caucus had the same problem. The Women’s and Hispanic caucus were packed and the convention itself had a great attendance during an off year. We were talking about issues and how to make Texas and our country better for everyone.

No one can say we were not talking about what we would do to make Texans lives better because we were and we have and we will continue to do so. If you do not want to be an ignorant parrot of the Republican Party, go listen to the speeches. Or shut the hell up.

Vendors
Lots of vendors attended the convention. Even some that should have like the Gun Nuts of Texas, School Vouchers for the Rich, and Constitutional Conference for republicans.

Restaurants
Lucky for delegates there are a number off restaurants within walking distance of the convention. Unfortunately I haven’t found a good one yet.

Beers for Beto.
Coming up!

It’s basically dishonest.

I counted three vendors who might want to re-think coming to our convention in 2020, the Texas version of the nra, the School Vouchers people, and the Greg Abbott Constitutional Convention group. None were well received by Democrats.

The Texas State Rifle Association is an extension of the nra but they are presenting themselves as a “common sense” gun rights group. Common sense people do not want open carry or carrying around loaded assault rifles in public. Common sense people believe in closing the loop holes on background checks at gun shows. The tsra has lobbied against these common sense issues. This group is nothing more than a mini-nra. They do not belong here at our Convention. Funny…..they are right next to Moms Demand Action.

The Constitutional Convention group is presenting themselves as a a group advocating for limited government (Greg Abbott supports this group). It sounds great on paper but then are advocating for cutting social services like Medicare, Social Security under the disguise of fiscal responsibility. They advocate for a balanced budget amendment like the one that has been used to cut education and services throughout the state. The fact that Abbott and the republicans are in support of this group should tell you enough about them.

The School Vouchers group is cleverly named “School Choice” and they dishonestly advocate for better education. What they don’t tell you is that they are advocating for better education with school vouchers. They figured out that vouchers is a bad word especially with a group of people who support our families, friends, and educators who are in the public school system. They left their material on the table for people to take. Someone took the opportunity to write them a note.

A Family First rally in support of the children separated from their families will take place  at the Convention Center concourse at 9:45. They expect a large crowd. Report will follow.

Family First Rally
9:45 AM
Convention center concourse
Jackets are optional.

I am ready to attend the various Hispanic caucuses. Reports coming throughout the day. Wearing my Loteria t-shirt.

Lotería is a game of chance, similar to bingo, but using images on a deck of cards instead of plain numbers on ping pong balls. Every image has a name and an assigned number, but the number is usually ignored. Each player has at least one tabla, a board with a randomly created 4 x 4 grid of pictures with their corresponding name and number. Players choose what tabla they want to play with, from a variety of previously created tablas. Each one presents a different selection of images.