Burnt Orange Report

Early Report from the DNC Meetings

By Byron LaMasters

Texas DNC member David Holmes posted to his DNC Yahoo Group yesterday his summary of the DNC events on Friday. Here's his summary of the events:

The 2005 Winter meeting of the DNC would feel familiar to those of you who attended the Texas Democratic Party convention. While quite a bit smaller than the state convention, everyone here is covered in stickers and buttons and campaign material of the various candidates for DNC officer positions.

This morning the full DNC met to hear speeches from a number of distinguished Democrats - and two possible 2008 Presidential contenders.

John Edwards gave a great version of his 2004 campaign speech with a few new personal stories thrown in and more energy than I had noticed from him in a while. He said that his wife is doing well.

Bill Richardson gave a good speech about the policy and campaign innovations that have been going on in states - and outside of DC. He did get booed when he said that we need to change the law to allow Governor Granholm to run for President - only because of the California situation. Overall, he was well received.

Most of the rest of the day has been filled with constituency caucus meetings and time to meet the candidates.

There are very heated campaigns going on for a couple of the Vice Chair positions, while at least half of the total number of positions are uncontested. All of the candidates, though, were available to meet with DNC members for a couple hours this afternoon, including Governor Dean.

Tonight the Young Democrats of America are having their big fundraiser of the year with Mark Strama keynoting the event.

I'm sure David will have some more thoughts on the entire weekend coming soon...