Democracy for New Mexico

Victory? Victory!

Wow. Wow. Wow. Not only has Governor Richardson finally jumped on the Howard Dean for DNC Chair train as it leaves the station, but both Simon Rosenberg and Donnie Fowler have quit the race and endorsed Dean. As Richardson said, Dean "won fair and square." Yes he did. All indications are that he now has more than enough of the 447 votes of the DNC for victory.

This is no small achievement, as we all know. Despite heavy opposition from Beltway insiders, Republican-lite pundits and consultants and those in the Party who evidently value personal power over Party success, we did it folks. We did it. Of course it's Dean himself who "did it" with a saavy, honest and personal campaign that focused on talking sense with the voting members, but I think we can all feel a part of it. When Dean talks, it's always about US and how WE can take our country and our Party back from those whose first allegiance is to corporate power and to hell with the ordinary people. Make no mistake. This is a victory for US.

How am I celebrating today? By digging in and getting to work, as I'm sure we'll all be doing in the days and months ahead. If you're in Albuquerque, be there or be square:

Democratic Precinct Activation Meeting
TODAY, 11:00 AM
IBEW Hall, 4921 Alexander Blvd NE
Click for map
(Bring a sack lunch)

Rally to Protect Our Public Lands
TODAY, 2:00 to 5:00 PM, Kimo Theatre
(More info here.)

And your thoughts on the apparent Dean victory?

(For old time's sake, here some links to the famous Faulkner Remix, the Thank You Howard Dean flash video and the Sacramento CA speech, "What I Wanna Know", that started it all off. Still not satisfied? Click here.)

NM DNC Members Now Endorse Dean for Chair

From Charlotte Roybal:

Good news. The NM DNC members have all endorsed Howard Dean. It has all happened since Monday. I spoke with John Wertheim, State Chair, today and he told me. I had talked to Gloria Nieto and she and Annadelle Sanchez who both went with the Hispanic Caucus on Monday. I spoke with Raymond Sanchez and he is on board. The one we forgot to ask is Patricia Madrid and I saw her today and she said she was on board now that her candidate dropped out. So good job DFAers and other for helping Dean.

I also attended the Progressive Democrats of America Conference in DC and would love to give a presentation  any progressive group in NM about it.  Let me know at (505) 930-0563 or email: croybal@aol.com  I also met with Chris Warshaw from DFA.

The web site is: www.pdamerica.com

Editor's Note: DFNM is an ally/partner organization of Progessive Democrats of America, and Howard Dean is a supporter. Here's a that support PDA.

DNC Hispanic Caucus Votes Overwhelmingly to Endorse Dean

As published on DFA's

The members of the Hispanic Caucus of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) voted overwhelmingly today to officially endorse Gov. Howard Dean for Chair of the national Democratic Party. The endorsement is the first from any DNC caucus to be granted and guarantees Gov. Dean at least 35 of the 45 votes in the caucus. Nine caucus members were unavailable to participate in the deliberations and voting, which took place via conference call today.

"Gov. Dean has proven himself to be a terrific fundraiser and he has the character and stature to speak for the Democratic Party," said Sen. Iris Martinez, Illinois General Assembly member and Secretary of the Hispanic caucus, "most importantly, Gov. Dean understands that rolling back the advances Republicans have made among the Hispanic electorate will be critical to not just winning back the White House but also to keeping crucial states in the Democratic column."

Governor Dean has a unique perspective on building the grassroots as demonstrated in his organization, Democracy for America and his presidential campaign. As governor, Dean created a record based on fiscally conservative principles while promoting equality and opportunity for all the citizens of Vermont. In extending its vote of confidence to Gov. Dean, the Hispanic Caucus expects Gov. Dean to use his energy, creativity and boldness to assist the Caucus and the Party to move the Hispanic community into becoming a solid base for our democratic agenda.

"Our decision today exemplifies the type of leadership we will exercise to help Chairman Dean reach out to the Hispanic community which will be the most critical voting bloc in every election in the foreseeable future," said Sen. Martinez.

DNC Hispanic Caucus Members Endorsing Gov. Howard Dean:

Steven K. Alari, Dr. Celita Arroyo de Roques, Cathy Bartolotti, Tonio Burgos, Luisette Cabanas, Linda Chavez-Thompson, Alvaro Cifuentes, Maria Echaveste, Edward Espinoza, Norma Fisher Flores, Nely Galan, Alexandra Gallardo Rooker, Maria Garcia, Carmen Gonzalez, Teresa Krusor, Dr. Miguel D. Lausell Esq., Debbie Marquez, Hon. Iris Y. Martinez, Hon. Ramona Martinez, Hon. Antonio Villaraigosa, Raul Martinez, Hon. Kenneth McClintock, Hon. Gloria Molina, Gloria Nieto, John A. Perez, Hon. Roberto L. Prats, Hon. Roberto Ramirez, Joe Rios, Lula Rodriguez, Mannie Rodriguez, Mirian Saez, Annadelle Sanchez, Hon. Oscar Soliz, Alexis Tameron, Hon. Art Torres, Norma Torres, Steven Ybarra
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(Click for a Spanish language version of this article.)

Editor's Note: Notice the two names in boldface on this list. Both are voting members of the DNC from New Mexico. If you'd like to send a note of thanks to Gloria Nieto and Annadelle Sanchez, here is their contact info:

Gloria Nieto
1451 Santa Cruz
Santa Fe, NM  87505
505-474-7602
Glorianieto@comcast.net

Annadelle Sanchez
920 Denton ST
Espanola, NM 87532
505-753-4869

Also good to remember: Several other Hispanic members of the DNC from New Mexico are not on this list of Dean endorsements: Raymond Sanchez, Gov. Bill Richardson and Attorney General Patricia Madrid. The official election for DNC Chair will take place on February 12th. It will be interesting to see if these three vote for Dean then, despite not endorsing him now. I recall that Madrid was originally a supporter of Martin Frost, who dropped out of the race yesterday. No word on who Sanchez and Richardson are supporting.

Frost Drops Out of Race for DNC Chair

Can it be? Will Dean win this time? According to an AP article in The Guardian:

Former Texas Rep. Martin Frost dropped out of the race for Democratic national chairman on Tuesday, winnowing the field to front-runner Howard Dean and three challengers.

Frost's decision came hours after AFL-CIO leaders decided not to make an endorsement in the race for Democratic National Committee chairman.

Frost had counted heavily on organized labor to give him a boost and many in the AFL-CIO were prepared to back him at one point, but Frost had not shown the strength in the race to get an endorsement, union officials said.
[. . .] 
The decision Monday by state party leaders to endorse Dean prompted many in the party to comment that Dean is looking unbeatable. Former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb dropped out of the race and endorsed Dean Monday.

UPDATE: Daily Kos has an excellent story on this, plus an excerpt of a remarkable letter from Donna Brazile giving advice to Dean. There's also some info on Rep. Nancy's Pelosi's involvement in the DNC Chair process. There are only three other candidates left in the race: Roemer, Donnie Fowler and Simon Rosenberg, and Dean has a big and growing lead in voting members.

UPDATE 2: They're dropping like flies. is reporting that Rosenberg is out and Roemer will be next, leaving only Donnie Fowler. And as the post explains, he's enmeshed in a scandal coming out of Michigan.

DNC Chair Developments

A hyped up story is all over the media describing how the executive committee of the Association of State Democratic Chairs (ASDC) endorsed Donnie Fowler for DNC Chair. In truth, Fowler's margin was only 8-6 over Dean. The executive committee's decision was merely a recommendation to the full membership of the organization. The really important news, however, is that the ASDC membership as a whole has endorsed Dean by a margin of almost 3-1, in opposition to their executive committee's suggestion.

The membership of the ASDC voted this morning by phone. Here are the results, as reported by Jerome Armstrong on MyDD:

Update: The Chairs and Vice Chairs rejected the recommendation of the Executive Committee to back Fowler. They then did a roll-call vote, which Dean won:

             The ASDC ballot                    Endorsements
             (state chairs-vice chairs)     (public DNC members)

Dean         56                                 49
Fowler       21                                  9
Frost         5                                 15
Roemer        3                                  4
Rosenberg     3                                  4
Webb          3                                 10
Leyland       0                                  2
Abstain       5 

That's 58% for Dean on the first ballot among the 96 ASDC Chairs and Vice Chairs that voted (Hotline); alongside Dean's continued backing within the DNC At-Large Members (and Labor is rumored to be next on board), Dean's in the homestrech and leading all alone.
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The lastest progressive organization to join the Dean for DNC Chair effort is Ben (of Ben & Jerry's icecream) Cohen's True Majority. Go to their website to sign a petition backing Dean for the job. And pass on the link to others who support Howard Dean for DNC Chair.

Update: According to an article in the , Former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb has just dropped out of the DNC Chair race and endorsed Dean.

The DNC Caucuses and the Progressive Principles Project

From Driving Votes:

If we learned one thing at the DNC Western Regional Caucus in Sacramento last weekend, it is this: Bush's victory on November 2nd has only made the grassroots base of the Democratic Party stronger.

To borrow from Obi Wan Kenobi's famous last words to another Dark Imperial Lord, "You cannot win, George W. Bush. If you strike us down, we shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

On Saturday, hundreds of rank-and-file Democrats from all over California descended on Sacramento for the DNC meeting, ready to take the movement we built during last year's election and focus it on fixing our party. Nearly everyone in attendance was behind Howard Dean's agenda for reform and renewal. Never before has a DNC Chair election seen so much active participation from the grassroots, and Dean is the candidate that can bring that energy into the party.

Driving Votes brought 35 activists to Sacramento, and will be bringing close to 100 to the Eastern Caucus this Saturday in New York City. Read about how things went in Sacramento for Driving Votes activists in their own words, and stay tuned for updates from our delegation to New York.

While Driving Votes volunteers attend the caucus to represent the grassroots, you can also help define the future of progressive politics by joining an online discussion with progressives all over America. Over the last twenty years, the Democratic Party has made so many compromises with Republicans that it has all but abandoned the progressive principles it claims to represent. Its message has become watered down, scattered and incoherent, while the Republican message has been honed to a lethal point.

It's up to us to change that. The Progressive Principles Project is an online discussion, aimed at drafting a concise statement of the values that bind us to one another as progressive Americans. Thirteen progressive organizations and counting are participating in the discussion, and we're inviting you to join the conversation.

The future of progressive social change is looking brighter already.

Sincerely,
Leighton and Jesse, Driving Votes

BIG NEWS: Ex-Clinton Aide Ickes Backs Dean for DNC

Excerpts from an Associated Press article just released:

Harold Ickes, a leading Democratic activist and former aide to President Clinton, said Friday he is backing Howard Dean to be chairman of the Democratic National Committee -- giving a powerful boost to the front-runner.

"I think all the candidates who are running have strong attributes, but Dean has more of the attributes than the others," said Ickes, who considered running for chairman himself before dropping out in early January. "Many people say Howard Dean is a northeastern liberal, he is progressive, but his tenure as governor of Vermont was that of a real moderate."

Ickes, who is chairman of the political action committee of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said the endorsement was his alone and "does not reflect Sen. Clinton's opinion."

While Ickes would not comment on the Clintons' preferences, he is a close ally and would not be endorsing Dean against their strong objections.
[. . .]
Ickes' endorsement comes at a critical time in the chairman's race and gives Dean almost 50 of the more than 215 votes he would need to win the post. The field could be narrowed in the next few days, as state party chairs and organized labor offer their views on the race.

(Click the link at the top of this post for the entire article.)

Here's a link to a summary of endorsements made so far supporting Dean for DNC Chair.

ACTION ALERT: Attend DPNM's ABQ Precinct Activation Meeting!

Democratic Party
Precinct Activation Meeting!!

Learn how YOU can get involved
in your precinct and ward

Everyone Welcome
Bring a Sack Lunch-Coffee Provided

IBEW Hall
4921 Alexander Blvd NE
Saturday, February 5, 2005
11:00 AM

Contact Terri Holland
DPNM  Headquarters
830-3650 x11

Editor's Note: All DFA-DFNM members and other progressives are urged to attend this meeting so we can get as many people as we can involved at the precinct level, and running for ward and precinct chairs at the March 3rd Democratic ward/precinct meetings around Albuquerque. This hands-on meeting will teach you how.

A Vision of Our Own

Highly recommended read: A Vision of Our Own: Four Ideas for the Left to Redefine Itself, by John Powers in the LA Weekly. After an impressive delineation of what we are facing and how we got here, Powers sets out four things Democrats must take back from the right:

. . . the left needs to do what the right did. It needs to define what it stands for. And it must be willing to fight for what it believes over the long haul, even if it means losing some elections. In particular, it must begin to take back four things that it has ceded to the right.

1. It must reclaim virtue. After the election, you heard endless talk about how Bush won on "values." This wasn’t true — the so-called values vote was no more powerful in 2004 than in earlier years. But what is true is that conservatives are scarily comfortable talking about morality, while the left (still influenced by "scientific" socialism) is made nervous by moral language. Because of this, our political culture’s idea of virtue has been whittled into a sad, mingy thing, a question of private behavior. Yet one historic strength of the left was its belief that morality is also a matter of public virtue — justice, equality, generosity, tolerance. The loss of this idea has been catastrophic. While Republicans rouse their troops by attacking Clinton’s immorality or gay marriage, Democrats couldn’t make hay from the moral outrage of corporate executives (who make 1,000 times their employees’ wages) selling off stock options for top dollar while letting pension funds collapse. Morality should be our issue, not theirs. Where’s The Book of Liberal Virtues?

2. It must reclaim freedom. One of the left’s glories has been its tradition of heroic internationalism, still alive in the anti-globalization movement’s insistence on workers’ rights around the world. (Typically, though, "anti-globalization" sounds negative rather than positive.) But when it comes to foreign policy these days, the left appears lost. I get depressed hearing friends sound like paleocon isolationists or watching them reflexively assume that there’s something inherently tyrannical about the use of American power. It’s not enough to mock Norman Podhoretz’s insistence that the battle with Islamic terrorism is World War IV. Just as the left lacked a coherent position on what to do with murderous despots such as Milosevic and Saddam — it won’t do to say, "They’re bad, but . . ." The left now needs a position on how best to battle a Muslim ideology that, at bottom, despises all the freedoms we should be defending. America should be actively promoting the freedom of everyone on the planet, and the key question is, how would the left do it differently from the Bush administration?

3. It must reclaim pleasure. For the last 30 years, the right’s been having fun — Lee Atwater playing the blues, Rush Limbaugh giving that strangulated laugh, The Weekly Standard running those mocking covers — while the left has been good for you, like eating a big, dry bowl of muesli. This isn’t simply because leftists can be humorless (a quality shared with righteous evangelicals), but because, over the years, they’ve gone from being associated with free love and rock & roll to seeming like yuppified puritans; hence the Gore-Lieberman ticket talked about censoring video games and brainy leftist Thomas Frank tirelessly debunks the pleasure of those who buy anything Cool or find Madonna meaningful. (Clinton was an exception — he enjoyed a Big Mac and an intern as much as the hero of a beer commercial — and he was the one Democrat in recent years that most average Americans really liked.) While the left is correct in talking about the gas-guzzling horror of SUVs, it’s a losing cause to tell a nation full of proud drivers that they should feel guilty about the car they love. Rather than coming off as anti-consumerist puritans in a consumerist culture, the left should be fighting on the side of freedom and pleasure — for instance, arguing that ordinary people should have more time off from the endless hours of work that increasingly devour our souls. This is the kind of idea we should own — and force the right to argue against.

4. Finally, and above all, it must try to reclaim utopia. Back during the horrors of mid-20th-century Germany, the great Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch wrote, "This is not a time to be without wishes." He knew that any successful political action had to begin in hope and dreams. The same is true as we enter the second Bush administration. The right controls the machinery of government and isn’t shy about using it to change the world to make it fit the twin religions that drive it — Christianity and untrammeled free-market economics. To fight such a radical, all-encompassing vision, we need an equally big countervision of our own. I’m not talking about some mad fantasy of heaven on earth (those usually lead to death camps), but a dream bigger than hopes that the Democratic Party will come back into power four years from now. To create the world we want, we have to regain the hopeful belief that we are trying to create a world thrillingly better than the one we now live in. Promising more prescription drugs for seniors just won’t cut it.

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What do YOU think about Power's take on this?

Thanks to John McAndrew for this article.

Latest on Race for DNC Chair

The voting members of the DNC are having their Western Regional Caucus this weekend in Sacramento, CA, and alot of good reports about the event are filtering in on the blogs. Dean supporters have been out in force at the meetings and it appears that he's now the clear frontrunner among the candidates for DNC Chair. We all know what that means. As reported by Howard Fineman of Newsweek in an article entitled "Now Playing: 'Anybody But Dean, Part 2'":

Democrats, meanwhile, divided into familiar warring camps: for and against Howard Dean. In Burlington, Vt., Dean and hundreds of fans gathered for an "un-Inauguration"--and in support of the former governor's quest to become the new chairman of the Democratic Party. In Georgetown that same evening,  hordes of insiders partied at the stately home of Mark Penn, the Clinton family pollster, where they gripped and grinned with Bill and Hill, cheered each other up--and fretted about Dean's assault on party headquarters. "There was a ton of positive energy at the house," a guest said later, "except for the fear and loathing of Dean."

Isn't it classy that the Hillary and Bill Clinton wing of the Party is so threatened by the power of the people in the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party that they'd rather hang onto power and lose than join in to make the changes we need to win?

And this really makes me laugh so hard it's more like crying:

Then, as now, a party establishment—based in Congress, governors' mansions and Georgetown salons—viewed him (Dean) as a loudmouthed lefty whose visibility would ruin the Democratic brand in Red States.

Ruin the Democratic brand in the Red States? What Democratic brand? The one that was so ignored that Kerry and other top Dems made not one appearance in non-battleground Red States, and ensured that the DNC gave as little bucks as possible to our state parties there?

Um, I guess these DLC-Clintonista types haven't noticed that we've lost more seats in Congress and legislatures and cities and counties than ever before with their "brand" of apologetic, weak-kneed begging. We've lost the presidency twice in a row with their "brand" of Republican-lite and their inside the Beltway "consultants" who are so afraid to be Democrats that they've developed a brand that stands for absolutely nothing, one entirely devoid of passion and pride.

Here are links to blog articles on this weekend's DNC caucus:

DNC Caucus: Dean's Fresh Horses & Hillary's Dark Forces

DNC Western Caucus Today in Sacramento