Local takes one last chance to vote for Hillary Clinton

Moses Ross will be a Democratic National Convention delegate

By Shasta Kearns Moore

The Southwest Community Connection, Aug 1, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Capitol Hill resident Moses Ross, here in Multnomah Village, is the only male delegate elected from Oregon’s first congressional district who is pledged for Hillary Clinton in the upcoming Democratic National Convention, Aug. 25 to 28. Choosing delegates is a complicated process involving intra-party elections of local representatives to the convention.

Shasta Kearns Moore / The Southwest Community Connection

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MULTNOMAH – New York Sen. Hillary Clinton may have won nearly 18 million votes in her failed bid to win the Democratic presidential nomination, but Capitol Hill resident Moses Ross is just as proud of the 18 votes he won in order to represent her at the Democratic National Convention.

Although Clinton’s campaign has been suspended, she hasn’t yet given up the delegates that those millions of votes represent. Her delegates will convene along with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama’s delegates in Denver, Colo., Aug. 25 to 28, where they will officially select the Democratic Party’s candidate for president.

A local party activist and a longtime Clinton supporter, Ross said he is looking forward to being a part of this democratic process.

“Symbolically, we’re the representatives of Hillary Clinton in this neighborhood,” he said. “I take pretty seriously the fact that this is not Moses Ross being represented, this is about the people in the first CD (congressional district) being represented.”

But he also said he sees it as an opportunity to support a positive role model for his mother and daughter.

“They motivated me to do this because I want a better life for them,” he said. “When I look at my 3-year-old daughter and the ground that Hillary broke, I’m proud to be a part of that.”

Who gets to be a delegate?

Ross was chosen as a district-level delegate for Oregon’s first congressional district through an election process at Beaverton’s Aloha High School June 7. The district convention was the most widely attended in the state, attracting 306 voters, according to the Democratic Party of Oregon (DPO).

“We had double or triple the people at the district conventions this year,” said DPO spokesman Marc Siegel, crediting the “intense” Democratic presidential primary race for heightening awareness of this process. “It had been 40 years since Oregon’s primary had mattered.”

But to those outside of the party process – and even to some inside of it – the process of electing people to be delegates at the national convention is complicated and confusing.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) chooses four kinds of delegates, though the method of selection varies by state.

The category that received wide attention in this election cycle was the so-called “superdelegate”: what the DNC calls Party Leaders and Elected Officials or PLEO delegates. These include the Democrats in the state’s congressional delegation, or other high elected or party offices, such as the governor.

These delegates were created in 1984 after a series of direct primary elections produced candidates that the Democratic leaders felt middle-of-the-road general elections voters wouldn’t support, according to Congressional Quarterly.

The “superdelegates,” which today make up about 20 percent of the total delegates, are uncommitted to any candidate and allowed to vote for whomever they want at the convention.

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