Lake Highlands / White Rock Democrats Recap Dallas Meeting
By Byron LaMasters
From the email bag today is another recap of the Dallas Democratic Executive Committee meeting from the Lake Highlands / White Rock Democratic Club. They are sending the following article in their newsletter this month. The authors are Bill James, the Newsletter Chair of the Lake Highlands White Rock Democrats and SDEC 16 member Theresa Daniel. Daniel is a former president of the club and the Democratic nominee for HD 107 in 2002. The account given here is the account that I believe is most likely to be reflected in the minutes of the meeting to be prepared by the party secretary and to be approved by the executive committee at the next official meeting:
Petitioned Meeting of DCDP Ends In Controversy
By Bill James and Theresa Daniel
Dallas County Democratic Party meetings can be noisy and contentious, but Monday evening February 28 had a special air. The meeting was called by a majority of 324 (347?) precinct chairs (actually over 60% responded) with a signature petition. This was the first time in memory of many of the chairs that such a meeting was called by petition; similar measures were taken in 1990 in Harris County. Why people signed varied - some thought it was time, since the last DCDP executive committee meeting was May 2004. Others had a broad range of dissatisfaction with the performance of Democratic County Chair, Susan Hays. The complaints covered dereliction of duty, statutory negligence, primary election ballot shenanigans, misuse of party resources, a stunted unified campaign effort, and financial and personnel mismanagement.
The 6:30 pm meeting was delayed for over an hour as Chair Hays stalled calling the meeting to order waiting for confirmation of a quorum. Rumblings in the assembled delegation called for “getting on with the meeting.”
Instead, Hays filled time by rehashing the voter turnout numbers for the past election. Once Chair Hays called the meeting to order, she appointed Gene Freeland Sergeant at Arms to maintain order. With his appointment came the warning that the CWA Local president had stated, that if the meeting became disorderly, Mr. Freeland had the authority to order the building vacated on behalf of the owners. Warning taken, the crowd behaved very well.
The first motion on the floor was made by Shannon Bailey to adopt an agenda prepared by the petitioning precinct chair group that included two resolutions to be placed on the floor. After parliamentary games, the first resolution, “to establish quarterly meetings of the executive committee of the DCDP” passed unanimously.
The second resolution, “to establish a Democratic Advisory Committee to create a DCDP Two-Year Plan for 2005-2006” was moved and seconded with various amendments. This passed with a very large margin. Then a Hays supporter was recognized and stated that a quorum was no longer present. A back-and-forth discussion of parliamentary and party rule questions was called in rapid succession when it became clear that Chair Hays was seeking to adjourn the meeting for lack of a quorum. Votes were taken with Chair Hays declaring the meeting out of order to thwart the will of the assembled petitioning Precinct Chairs.
A Roll Call of the precinct chairs was attempted to determine the quorum status. The meeting degenerated quickly as it became evident that the official list was faulty. At one point, Chair Hays read a name of precinct chair who had died. [A precinct chair], scolded the chair stating that this lack of knowledge was typical of the problem. The Roll Call was stopped.
Chair Hays directed Gene Freeland as Sergeant at Arms to declare the meeting over and ordered the assembled Democrats to “leave the building immediately.”
SDEC 16 was hastily assembled by Committee-members Ken Molberg and Theresa Daniel where nominations were made and Shannon Bailey (3220) and Bruce Rothstein (1147) were elected as the delegates from SD16 to the Advisory Committee formed with ratification of the second resolution.
As the SD16 meeting closed Ken Molberg, SDEC 16 Co-Chair said, “After many decades of Democratic activism, I was embarrassed by the actions of the County Chair and her abuse of the precinct chairs. We must regroup and move on.”
Like SDEC 16 the other Senate District Committees met to nominate and elect Advisory Committee members as prescribed in the second resolution as passed.
SDEC 2 seated Charles Bowen (2601), and Gay Michele (2324), with Darlene Ewing (2319) as an alternate. Steve Tillery assumed the committeeman representation.
SDEC 8 elected Kathy Bannon, (1405), and Anthony Pace (1811), with Al Daniels (1110) as an alternate, David Griggs will serve as the committeeman.
SDEC 9 elected Katy Hubener, and Tom Madrzy-Kowski (4601). Christine Asberry as the committeewoman.
SDEC 23 elected Michael Moon (3309), and Dorothy Dean (3535), with Elaine Wiant (3204) as alternate.
Outside the CWA Hall, around the flagpole DCDP Secretary, David Wilkins continued chairing the meeting with many of the petitioning precinct chairs participating. Recognizing that the meeting had never been officially adjourned, they passed a motion declaring the meeting to be “in recess, and to be continued at the stated date of April 2.” That date coincides with the Summit Meeting announced earlier by Chair Hays.
What does this all mean? Theresa Daniel, the other co-committee member of SD16, agrees that the disrespect shown the Democratic precinct chairs by the county chair tonight was unprecedented. “Our challenge is go around, go through, whatever we need to do to achieve our goals as Democrats. It may not be easy, but we are here to see Dallas County through to its place on the Democratic side.”
The greatest loss of the meeting was that 60 pending precinct chairs were not installed. Hopefully next time we will have a quorum to do that.
More from Bill James:
I am the Newsletter Chair for the Lake Highlands White Rock Democrats. Theresa Daniel and I wrote [this article] to report about the County Executive Committee Meeting of DCDP called by petition on Feb. 28, 2005 for the LHWR Democrats monthly newsletter.
LH/WR Democrats was one of the first clubs to begin open discussion of the problems with Susan Hays as Chair of DCDP in December. We ratified the first of the club resolutions regarding the Chair in that arose in January. There is a deep distrust that has developed among a vast majority of the activist base in Dallas toward Susan Hays. It has seemed to many very experienced, long time Democrat activists that the strength of Dallas Democrats was being deeply eroded under her leadership. All during 2004 under the leadership of Chair Hays the County Party apparatus seemed to be unused, the web site had no information, precinct chairs couldn’t get information to help work their neighborhoods, and on and on.
The disorderliness of the meeting on Monday, in my opinion, was provoked by Chair Hays. The two resolutions were handled quite well and seemed to me to be great deliberative process. The meeting veered out of control when quorum questions arose by Hays supporters. It seemed that dirty tricks were afoot to somehow break the meeting. Any damage done to the Democratic Party is a result of her intransigence in failing to see she has lost the confidence of the rank and file activists of Dallas County.
If she has the best interests of the Democratic Party in her heart, she should resign her post, and let the advisory committee cover the Duties of the Chair until the next election in spring of 2006.
Bill James
Dallas, Texas
Newsletter Chair, Lake Highlands White Rock Democrats
Posted by Byron LaMasters at March 2, 2005 10:43 AM
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I want to clear something up.
A number of us wanted to simply not show up for the Monday night meeting on the expectation that there would not be a quorum and no business would be conducted.
Susan objected to this and asked that we come to the meeting.
When I saw the tone of the meeting and that approximately 15 people were needed to break the quorum, I took it upon myself to recruit as many people as I could to leave - with one person remaining to ask for the quorum call.
This was not authorized by Susan. In fact, I have good reason to believe that if I had asked her, she would have asked me not to do it.
Look at the divisiveness that is going on right now. Susan has been under attack since the day she was elected. Her detractors have chased away two executive directors and are now complaining about the third.
Russell Langley and I had plans to invite precinct chairs and anyone else in to discuss what the party could do to support the election. I was to implement as much of this as could be done with computers and databases in time to support the election. Russell was to handle the rest with his staff and volunteers.
But, Russell left in frustration over the attacks and backbiting. So, the work sessions with the precinct chairs and grassroots to plan for the election were dropped by the wayside.
If anyone is at fault here, it is the people, who through their constant attacks, made it a living hell to work for the party. Given the circumstances, the success we had in the last election is practically a miracle.
Unlike some of the people leading the mutiny, I did not support Susan for election as county chair. I supported Bill Howell. When Susan won the election, I immediately told her that I would do everything to help her and the party win elections.
I was threatened with physical assault at the election night party by one of the leaders of the mutiny - who had to be physically restrained by several people while screaming and threatening me. I left the area so that this person would calm down. Another member of your group followed me outside and threatened to "break my back".
And, then, of course, another leader of the mutiny threatened to destroy my business.
Another leader of the mutiny suggested that I support Susan Hays election as county chair even though they were not going to come out publicly in support of Susan. There's a whole lot of integrity goin' on there.
So, sorry, folks, I'm not buying the "Susan is evil and we're going to rescue the party garbage." This is a blatant power grab by people who have been duped into following those who have been working to undermine Susan since the day she was sworn in.
We'll spend the next two years fighting each other instead of organizing to win in November 2006.
I predict that if Susan resigns or is forced out, whoever replaces her will be ruthlessly attacked and every opportunity will be taken to keep the new chair from succeeding.
The idea that a group of people who can't even allow our Sheriff - the highest Democratic elected official in Dallas County - to speak at Monday night's meeting simply shows that the instigators have sewn division and discontent no less effectively than George Bush terrorized the country into voting for him in the 2004 election.
The majority of precinct chairs had the good sense to stay away from the meeting on Monday. I'm sorry I attended due to Susan's request and for my stupidity in holding out a hope that the muniteers would allow anything constructive to take place.
Nothing good will come of this. Keeping this up will do nothing more than cause us to lose the ground we have all worked so hard to gain.
I already know that a number of people who have been my friends for years will jump on me for making these comments. It remains to be seen whether the damage being done to the party and to long held and cherished friendships and alliances can be healed any time soon.
Geoff Staples
Democratic Precinct Chair
Precinct 1234
Dallas County, Texas
