More about the State Convention

More about the Convention. Yesterday I went into
some detail about what I did, but hardly touched
on the convention itself.

The Arena is huge. It must hold 12 or 15 thousand people. It
appeared to be pretty full. The main area is surrounded by
bleacher-type seats, although more comfortable seats than the
bleacher benches. Hanging from the ceiling are huge TV screens
which project what ever is happening on stage. That is how I
watched the events.

Udall's nomination was the first order of business, but that
took quite a while because there were many 2nds to the
nomination all of whom spoke briefly. The one I liked
the best was Maggie Udall who started off by saying that
she and Mark had been married for 30 years and " how much
I love that man." She went on from there to describe
some of their life experiences together. Their two
kids each had a few words to say about their dad, too.
Maggie later admitted to me that the boy had had his
arm twisted to do that because he is a very shy person.
He did just fine.

Udall spoke saying that this election is not about the
right or left, Republican or Democrat, Boulder or Fort
Collins. It's about the future and not the past. He
has pushed for renewable energy for years and talked
about the need to reduce America's addiction to foreign
oil and better economic policies, fixing the broken
economy which he said won't be easy, but fixing our
priorities would be easy. He also said that instead of
handing out massive subsidies to oil companies that are
already bloated with huge profits we should be investing
in the green jobs of the future, especially here in
Colorado. He talked about health care, education and
national security. Finally he said, "I opposed the Iraq
war from the start. I saw an administration rushing to
war without a clear mission, when we should have been
concentrating on Afghanistan, etc. What he didn't say
was that he would vote to bring an end to the war quickly.

Later Terry McAulife, former chairman of the Democratic
Party and, I think, Hillary's campaign manager, spoke
on behalf of Hillary. Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano
spoke for Barak.

Jared Polis spoke briefly for the position in CD2. The
other two candidates didn't bother to show up.

Governor Ritter spoke at great length. I tuned him out
after a while, too. Many, many, many other folks spoke
from their Congressional districts and a few who were
running for state positions also spoke. It was
certainly a day of speeches. I admit it was easier
to listen to them when I had something else to do.
Some of the speeches were really terrible..boring,
boring so I tuned those out.

There were more than 1500 delegates vying for the 12 at-large
delegate and two at-large alternate positions. The Obama folks
sent out a list of people for whom we (Obama supporters) should
vote. The ballot, as you might imagine was huge! The ballots
were divided between Obama supporters and Clinton supporters.
the ballot I got only included the Obama delegates. That meant
We had many more to choose from than the Clinton folks had.
Obama had a good majority at our February caucuses. I only
voted for Viki. I talked a few others into voting for her, too.
She said the women she was sitting with had also voted
for her, but after going to State she didn't think she could
stand three days of the same and assumed the National would be
just as loud. By the time it was over she had a terrible headache
despite having ear plugs in all day.

We also voted for the Electors to go to the Electoral College
on our behalf.