Burnt Orange Report

The Road to Boston

By Karl-Thomas Musselman

What follows is the more or less official report I wrote for my journey to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Parts of it were published on the front page of the Community Section of my local paper, the Fredericksburg Standard-Radio Post. While not a full and complete record (other elements and stories lie in the archives of this site) it should give new information and a readable picture of what was the most moving journey of my life to date.

Growing up, I thought I would find myself among the stars. With an interest in space and my last name, I figured it must be destiny that if Armstrong was the first man on the Moon, then Musselman could be the first man on Mars. My plans were to spend my life studying the heavens, getting to know the likes of Polaris, Vega, Sirius, and Castor.

It was certainly a lofty goal, but destiny found me some stars down here on Earth to be among last month, stars with names like Clinton, Gore, Dean, Edwards, and Kerry. It was the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and I was the youngest of Texas’ 232 delegates in Boston, representing Democrats in 21 Central Texas counties, including Gillespie. For a 19 year old Democrat from Fredericksburg, I’d say that’s still pretty ‘out of this world.’

My convention story actually began four years ago with the 2000 presidential election. Unlike the majority of Texans, Al Gore inspired me and was the reason I got involved in politics as a career. At the age of 15, I attended our Democratic Precinct Convention at St. Joseph’s Hall with my parents in my first act of participatory democracy. Even though I could not vote, it was there that I made the bold statement that in 2004, I would be the youngest delegate for Al Gore to our county, state, and national conventions.

Unfortunately, that dream in full could not be fully realized as Gore did not become President in 2000. But that did not stop me and in 2002 I got involved in the John Courage for Congress campaign. I volunteered for him at our County Fair and on Election Day, I stood outside the Courthouse polling location handing out literature to the few voters that trickled in after I got off from school.

While handing out literature for Mr. Courage that evening, I remember one woman, a Hispanic employee at the high school, who said she had only planned on voting for Sanchez for governor but she voted for Courage thanks to me. That one moment made that night worth it and I realized just then that conversations like that, multiplied by millions, was what was needed to help Democrats win in 2004. Most importantly, it gave me hope in a year when there was little for an aspiring Texas Democrat.

A year before the Democratic primaries, in the spring of 2003, I had already settled on my candidate for president, Howard Dean. For the next year, whether it was in Texas, New Hampshire, Iowa, or Arizona, I did what I could to help him win the nomination. But by the time the Texas Primary came about, my man was out of the race but still on the ballot. John Kerry had the nomination so I went ahead and cast my ballot for Dean along with a dozen other Gillespie County die-hard Deaniacs. It was the least we could do heading into our Precinct Convention that night, where 9 of the 13 Dean voters signed in county wide. It was there, in the same St. Joseph’s Hall that my journey to the National Convention began. All those in attendance advanced to our County convention where a few weeks later, I was elected as one of four delegates to the State Democratic Convention in Houston.

Traditionally, delegate seats go to Party regulars, long time activists, or elected officials. The rules are set up and not widely publicized in order to encourage the continuance of those in the system, and discourage flocks of new people from overtaking it. Certain paperwork has to be filed with the state party in advance and deadlines have to be met. Because of this, most of my work to become a national delegate took place in late May and early June, before the actual State Convention. This meant that I knew in advance who I was running against for the male John Kerry delegate slot for our district, which consisted of the same 21 counties in Troy Fraser’s State Senate district. It also meant I knew and had access to contact information each of the voting delegates in the district that would decide who to send to Boston.

Because of party rules, and the way delegates are allocated, I faced a bit of an uphill battle to begin with. Two of the 21 counties, home to Temple, Killeen, and Abilene, made up half of the total delegation from our district. Five out of six of my competitors for the seat were all from Abilene, and the remaining one from Llano, was the former head of the Wesley Clark campaign in Texas. Thankfully, Bell County, the most populated county with 51 delegate votes had no dog in the race providing an opening. My plan was to run a grassroots campaign, win over the Bell county delegates and pair that with votes from Gillespie, Kerr, Blanco, Burnet, and other smaller rural delegations.

The very first action taken was to develop a message for my campaign. I decided to run on my youth, activism, and my dream from 4 years prior. “Believe in me, Believe in our future” was the slogan which adorned the first piece of campaign literature, a hang-signed and addressed letter sent to all 160 odd delegates and Democratic Party County Chairs. Soon to follow were three different e-mails including endorsements and directing people to my campaign website I had set up. About 70 phone calls were made to gather support and in the week before the State Convention, I printed up postcards that included the time and voting location where the vote would be held in Houston.

At the state convention, I bypassed most of the caucus meetings and such on the first day. Instead, I staked out in front of our district’s sign in booth, talking to delegates as they signed in. Like any good candidate would, I offered campaign stickers, over a hundred of which were taken, more than enough to win if they actually turned into votes. By the time our district met to vote, there was little more to do than some last minute hand shaking and nomination speeches.

As it turned out, all but one of the other 6 challengers for the National delegate slot dropped out of the race, leaving a long time labor union delegate from Abilene as the only competition. We gave our speeches, each focused on our strengths, but when the vote was tallied it was evident that the grassroots campaigning did it’s job. With a 120-30 vote win, a four year old dream was fulfilled and I was headed to Boston.

I traveled up to Massachusetts the weekend before Democratic National Convention with the Austin delegation in order to attend Democracy Fest, the national gathering of Howard Dean activists, delegates, and progressives. Held in the rural western part of the state, it required a day’s travel by car and an overnight stay at a cheap motel which was the cause of the best joke of the trip.

It was very late by the time we arrived at the motel to spend the night. We ended up driving by the back entrance at first and saw a bank of old rooms of which the roof had been burned off by a past fire. The rest of the rooms were just fine but it gave a new meaning to smoking and non-smoking rooms we thought.

At Democracy Fest, we attended training sessions sponsored by the Latinos for Democracy people from California where we learned what it was like to run and political operation in a Democratic state. Alongside that, there were entertainers down in the dining tent; everything from political bands, comedy groups, slam poets, solo singers, and speakers.

Dean’s presidential campaign manager Joe Trippi, an icon to most of the grassroots, spoke that afternoon which prompted some interesting discussion. This event, being a gathering of the core of the hard core activists, had a number of people who were incredibly upset with Trippi for what they believe he did to the Dean campaign at the end. There are complaints about his firm managing the horrible media ads, not paying enough attention to Iowa, not paying attending to minority building, or any number of reasons.

Personally, I found it ironic how some of the Deaniacs disliked Trippi so much. The man had to build an enormous campaign first in order for his detractors to complain about how he let it fall apart! They have to at least give him credit for that.

Trippi spoke about his new book, The Revolution Will Not be Televised. Or rather, he spoke on how it was not a ‘tell all’. But he did outline what his greater vision was for political organizing beyond the Dean campaign. He spoke about how he felt that Americans are in a time between TV being the dominant medium to the Internet taking over. It’s an idea of how people will return to the community driven model of interaction, organization, and socialization instead of being driven by the solitary conversation that direct mail and TV ads create now in politics.

He was asked a question after his talk along the lines of, “If you were the Kerry campaign manager, what dream idea would you have for the campaign.” Trippi’s response was that at the national convention, during his nominating speech, he would have Kerry make the announcement that he was putting the future of his campaign into the hands of the American people by not accepting $75 million, taxpayer funded, public financing check for the post-convention portion of the general election campaign. By making a bold statement like that, for one, a media firestorm would be created, and two, it would advance the acknowledgement of online organizing and fundraising to now, not 10 years from now.

I understand his vision and I can see, just like I see it in any of the other Deaniacs, there is a deeper commitment, vision, and belief behind what we are all doing. And that gives me hope.

There is no way one can fully convey the awesome experience of being a first time National Convention Delegate. There is so much to take in that it is near impossible to remember all the amazing pieces. One tries to take pictures, write down what they can, and take home as many memories as possible while fulfilling an official duty as a delegate.

Activities fall into a few categories, some having little to do with the Convention Hall. One of the primary ones is official caucuses. Throughout the week, delegates could attend convention caucuses if they happened to fall into one of the various interest groups like Hispanics, Native Americans, Veterans, Disabled, or a variety of others. I attended the Youth caucus where for two hours we discussed what we could do to get students more involved on campuses. In addition, speakers came including representatives from one of the Wrestling Federations doing voter registration, one of the head organizers of MoveOn.org, and the two Kerry daughters. Other caucuses had speakers in line with their interests ranging from Congressmen to Ben Affleck to Hillary Clinton and Teresa Heinz-Kerry. Since speakers are almost never announced ahead of time and can drop in unexpected, delegates depend on word of mouth and their ability to get from one event to another quickly for the best caucuses.

Also during the week were various trainings put on by more groups than one can keep track of. Topics ranged from fundraising to effective crowd-building to developing winning messages or building online grassroots organizing tools. There were sessions in which delegates gave brief speeches and received critiques. In others, delegates were invited to hear big name party analysts give their view on how the race for the House and Senate were developing. Hopping from hotel to hotel, sometimes across town to make particular session not only provided hectic schedule but also a way to burn the excess calories that most delegates took on at on the various breakfasts and after-parties scatter about town.

For veteran delegates who have been to many National Conventions, it is these meetings and parties which provide the most fun. It’s hard to pass up free food, free drinks, and the opportunity to schmooze with important luminaries. Some events are free, others by donation. Some are invite-only or open if you happen to know the right invited people. Or, in my case once, if you act like you’ve been invited and walk on in with a reporter in tow, few will question you.

A facet of great importance at modern day conventions is one that is nearly impossible to overlook. The Media. For every delegate, there are at least 3 officially accredited members of the media. In the hall, on the streets, or behind the security perimeter there was no place that delegates could go without running into someone with a camera, recorder, or notepad. As Texas’ youngest delegate, as well as an online ‘blogger’ (an internet writer and pundit of sorts) I had around 30 different media encounters ranging from Texas newspapers to BBC radio to MTV.

It would seem as if the convention was more for the media and less for the delegates and these days, and that is mostly true. The entire message is managed by the party, with every speech, every poster, every official event trying into a grand theme, in this Convention’s case, “A Stronger America.” The organizers even supplied official ‘talking points’ in every delegates welcome packet, none of which have been infused into this article because the time for media pandering ended with the close of the convention.

A little known fact is that former presidential candidate Al Sharpton’s 20 minute convention speech was 14 minutes over what had been scheduled because he junked the official script on the Teleprompters. But because John Edwards’s speech had to start on time later that evening in order to be picked up by television broadcasts, organizers had to cut that many more minutes out of the night’s schedule, which they did with amazing speed.

Speaking of speeches, hearing so many stars of the Democratic Party in just four days was one of the most exciting things about the National Convention. Every single one of the 10 Democrats who ran for President addressed the delegates, some with louder applause and cheering than others. While the likes of Rep. Richard Gephardt and Senator Lieberman barely got the crowd on its feet, Wesley Clark and Howard Dean had to wait through minutes of non-stop cheering and frequent applause.

Dean’s speech meant much to me personally, and it meant a lot to the convention as it was the premier speech of unity for the party. As he ended his speech, he began to run through a list of states where he said we would be proud to be Democrats in, Iowa style, capping it off with Texas, at which our delegation burst out in full minute of nearly deafening cheers. Though our delegation had not one single official Dean delegate, we had the largest Dean delegation with 75 of us having been Dean supporters at some point in the past year. It was like being there for the infamous Iowa Caucus Dean Speech one more time. And just like the other Dean delegates, official or otherwise, there was a certain bittersweet feeling. Like Dean himself joked in his convention address, we know he was going to be there; we just thought it was going to be on Thursday night instead of Tuesday, accepting the nomination instead of speaking on behalf of unity behind the nominee.

While Dean’s appearance was personal, he actually came and visited with the Texas delegation at the Convention Hall on Thursday, the rest of the Democratic Superstars spoke as well. Bill Clinton and Al Gore spoke to our heart, to the base of the party, articulating the very message which we had lost two years ago. Elvis may have been the King of Rock and Roll, but Clinton was the King of Soul, the Democratic Soul of the convention. Barak Obama’s keynote address opened many eyes, ears, and hearts to the formerly unknown Democratic Senate candidate from Illinois. He hasn’t even been elected yet and delegates chattered about an Edwards/Obama ticket in 2012. John Edwards’s speech on Wednesday night, given while he had a 101 degree fever, was true to its message “Hope is on the Way.” After seeing him at the Texas State Convention, I finally got his message and realized why so many Iowans caucused for him. After Clinton, I have never heard a speaker so optimistic about what America could and should be. Most Democrats I know can’t wait to see the Cheney verses Edwards’s debate in the fall. “Talk about emotional opposites,” was a fellow delegate’s comment.

John Kerry’s acceptance speech was one of the most masterful works of political oratory, not because of what he actually said, but the effect it had on its targeted audience, undecided voters in swing states. With over half a million dollars spent on polling and focus groups in the prior month, the message was honed and perfected to appeal to the middle and satisfy the base, the premier balancing act of politics. As a result, the base donated over $5 million dollars online the day of the speech and the polls moved in the places that mattered, the battleground states.

And we as delegates were treated to a confetti filled balloon drop with the highly appropriate “We are Family” and “Celebrate Good Times” songs pumping through the Convention Center. Never underestimate a balloon drop’s power to create unity and energy, because it turns even the most ardent Anti-Bush Democratic voters into Pro-Kerry Democratic voters. While politicians might not care exactly why they get the votes they do, democracy cares because so much more is accomplished in the long run when citizens are for, not against, pro, not con.

But lost in all this hubbub of activity, speeches, parties, meetings, and general hoopla is the very simple task for which I was elected: to cast my official nominating vote for John Kerry as the Democratic Nominee for President. It was indeed the fulfillment of a four year old dream, one born on the inspiration of Al Gore, carried on by the hope of Howard Dean, and fulfilled by the acceptance of John Kerry.

Who said the third time couldn’t be the charm?