Folks:

Since sending out some effort at explaining the process, I seem to have raised more questions than I answered. So here, let me try it again -- who decides how we do it, and the pros and cons of the different choices.

Who Decides?

The Democratic Party Plan provides that the Democratic Committee for each House of Delegates or State Senate District will consist of the chairs of each of the jurisdictions that have a piece of the District, or their representatives. For the 57th District, that means Charlottesville and Albemarle. Russ Linden and Sherry Kraft have designated me to be the City representative; Fred Hudson has designated Eric Strucko to be the County representative. The weight of each person's vote on the Nominating Committee is the same as the percentage of the total number of votes received by the Democratic candidate receiving the most votes in the most recent general election for all precincts in the District (according to Section 7.4 of the Party Plan).

The State Party has done all of those calculations, and has determined that Charlottesville's representative will get 59.44% of the vote, and that Albemarle's representative will get 40.56% of the vote. The presumption is that the Chair of the District Committee will be the chair, or the chair's representative, from the jurisdiction with the largest percentage of the vote (Charlottesville). I will be the Chair of the District Nominating Committee.

If there is an incumbent Democrat running for re-election, he or she gets to select the method of nomination -- primary, convention or caucus. In this case, Mitch is the incumbent, but he is not running for re-election. He therefore does NOT get the right to choose the method of nominating his successor. In the absence of an incumbent Democratic member of the House of Delegates, the Nominating Committee shall determine the manner in which nominations will be made.

So what that means is that Eric Strucko and I need to make the decision.

Obviously, we are both interested in the perspectives of Democrats from the District; that's why I asked Sherry to post my request for comments. As a practical matter, how I as the City representative vote will determine things, because I have the majority of the voting strength.

What is the Time Frame for Decision?

If the Nominating Committee wishes to choose a primary, we must file a statement to that effect by March 16. If we do not file a statement choosing a primary by March 16, we will have the nomination by either caucus or convention.

If we choose a primary, candidates must file three things -- a Declaration of Candidacy, petitions with 125 signatures of voters in the 57th District, and a filing fee of $352.80. These must be filed during the window of time from March 29, 2005 to April 15, 2005. (This is a clarification, and a slight difference with, an earlier e-mail.) The Nominating Committee will then have to verify the petition signatures, and I will file by April 20, 2005, a list of all candidates who have qualified to be on the ballot. That would effectively end our Party involvement -- the primary itself is administered by the Board of Elections on June 14, 2005, when the primaries for statewide office are being held.

Here is how the primary would work.

On June 14, voters will go to their regular polling places. In Charlottesville, they will announce to an election official whether they are participating in the Democratic Primary or the Republican Primary.

They will then be given a code that will make sure that the voting machine that they go to will display the candidates for nomination of their chosen party. If a voter chooses to participate in the Republican Primary, he may vote for Governor from either Jerry Kilgore or George Fitch, for Lieutenant Governor from Bill Bolling, John Connaughton, Gil Davis, and one other whose name escapes me at the moment, for Attorney General from Bob McDonnell or Steve Baril, and, if the Republican Party so chooses, for 57th House of Delegates from any candidate who qualifies under whatever procedures they may use.

If a voter chooses to participate in the Democratic Primary, as things now stand she would NOT vote for Governor (Tim Kaine will be deemed to be nominated by default if he is the only person to file petitions) or Attorney General (Creigh Deeds will be deemed to be nominated by default if he is the only person to file petitions). Our Democratic voter would be able to vote for Lieutenant Governor from Leslie Byrne, Chap Petersen, Viola Baskerville and Phil Puckett (assuming that they all file their petitions); if we choose to nominate for the 57th District by primary, she would be able to vote for one of the Democratic candidates who qualifies with the party to run. A voter would NOT be able to vote for Jerry Kilgore for Governor and for a Democrat for 57th House.

If we choose NOT to have a primary, we would have to hold either a caucus or a convention. There are two different kinds of caucus permitted:

The Assembled Caucus -- sometimes called a mass meeting -- is highly structured. There is a definite starting time. Everyone meets in the same room at the same time. Doors are locked and no one is admitted after the caucus begins. Those who leave during the caucus may not be allowed to return. There is no weighting of the votes by precinct or political subdivision; the highest vote total wins.

The Unassembled Caucus is much looser in its operation. Voting takes place over a period of time and people are allowed to come in, vote, and leave - similar to a polling place on Election Day. This type of caucus usually runs for a few hours. We might run it from 12 noon to 6 PM at some central location on a Saturday afternoon. There is no weighting of the votes by precinct or political subdivision; the highest vote total wins.

A Convention, on the other hand, is a two-step process, in which there is a mass meeting at which delegates are elected to attend a convention.

If we had 100 delegates to the convention, 59 would be elected from Charlottesville and 41 would be elected from Albemarle. The mass meeting to elect delegates may be held immediately before the convention, or weeks ahead of time, or anything in between. In Charlottesville, we have recently developed a way of having a one-step convention that preserves the system of weighting by political subdivision (an aspect of the Convention process) while allowing you to be able to vote for your candidate and for it all to happen on one day (aspects of Caucuses). We first used this system to nominate Creigh Deeds in 2001; we have also used it in City Council nominating contests in 2002 and 2004.

A caucus or convention would have to be held some time between May 13 and June 14. It is generally better to shoot for a Saturday afternoon. May 14th is taken up because of a Fifth District Reorganizing Meeting. May 28th is over Memorial Day weekend, and the State Party urges us to avoid holiday weekends. Our choices, therefore, seem to be May 21, June 4 or June 11.

Pros and Cons of each:

How much expense or hassle to the Party would each entail? A primary involves no expense or hassle to the Party; a caucus or convention would probably cost between $2,000 and $3,000, for things like renting the auditorium, advertising, printing, etc., and there would have to be organizing committees. etc. The money for the expenses of the caucus or convention would probably come from some combination of the following -- a filing fee for candidates ($500?), passing the hat at the caucus or convention, or from the City and County Party treasuries. Some years we have asked for a fee to be paid by any person who was filing to be a delegate to a convention -- typically $5 to $15. We cannot require anyone to pay anything to participate in a primary, caucus or convention, either as a voter or as a delegate -- any "fee" paid by a delegate is purely voluntary.

How much time would be required to participate? The primary on June 14 will be at the same time as the primary for the statewide races, so the only additional time to participate would be about 30 seconds extra to go to one more screen in the voting booth. An unassembled caucus would be next easiest -- you would go to a polling place on the designated day and cast your ballot and leave. An assembled caucus is usually accompanied by speeches and so on, and may take a few hours. A convention may take two hours or so, or, if there are multiple ballots, may take more than that. Everyone's worst-case scenario is the 2002 City Council Nominating Convention, when it took almost 4 hours to do speeches for 6 candidates and to have 4 ballots. We learned something from that experience, and would presumably be able to streamline the process greatly.

Could you win with only a plurality of the vote? With a primary, there will be only one ballot. The highest vote-getter, whether by 51% or 26%, wins. The same is true for an unassembled caucus. An assembled caucus may be adopted with rules that call for more than one ballot, requiring a majority to be nominated. Or an assembled caucus may call for only one ballot, and the highest vote getter wins. This is a matter that the Nominating Committee would decide in advance. A convention system would have rules that called for multiple ballots until one candidate had a majority of the delegate vote.

Would Charlottesville's position of dominance in the nomination process be preserved or diluted? With a primary, unassembled caucus or assembled caucus, if more people showed up from the County than from the City, the City's 59% majority voice would be lost. With a convention system, the City's 59% majority voice would be retained. That does not mean that the City participants would necessarily vote for the same candidate, of course. But it does mean that with a convention, for a candidate backed by the County delegation to win nomination, he or she would have to get at least some support (10%) from the City as well.

Can the nominating process be taken over by a group that is passionately well-organized, but not likely to generate broad support in the general election? If this is a concern for you, you would favor the convention system. If you would look on this possibility as a good thing, or at least an interesting possibility, then one of the other methods may be preferable.

How many people would likely participate? In 2001, the statewide primary brought 1,031 voters for Lieutenant Governor in the City, and 533 (plus some absentees) in the County. (If you have seen an earlier e-mail from me, these figures are new, and accurate; the figures that I used in an earlier e-mail were just off-the-top-of-my-head recollections. We might expect, with a local primary, that there might be some higher number than that, but probably not much higher. Let's figure on about 1,600 participants. I would guess-timate that we would have about 1,000 participants in an assembled caucus or a convention, and probably a few more than that with an unassembled caucus. If the race is hotly contested, we could expect more than these guess-timates.

Would there be an opportunity to vote for a second choice if your first choice lost? Only in a system that calls for multiple ballots -- either a convention system or an assembled caucus (depending on the rules).

Is one system better in terms of allowing for absentee balloting? Yes. Only a primary allows for absentee balloting. The State Party Plan expressly forbids absentee balloting at caucuses and conventions.

Would Republicans be able to participate in our nominating process? In a primary system, the answer is "only if they want to forego participating in their own nominating process." Any participant in a caucus or convention must sign our Democratic pledge -- in which the person pledges that she is a Democrat, that she is not planning to vote for any person running against a Democrat in November, and that she is not planning to participate in the nominating process of the Republican Party. We cannot require that of anyone voting in the primary.

On the other hand, if she votes in our primary, she cannot participate in the Republican primary -- they are mutually exclusive. Although there are a few anecdotes around -- such as George Allen voting in the Democratic primary in 1977 to vote for Henry Howell because he would be a weaker opponent -- the number of times that actually happens seems to be small, and it would not be at all likely where each party seems to be having competitive primaries on the same day. If our hypothetical voter wanted to come to our convention or caucus and sign the pledge, and then vote in the Republican primary in violation of her pledge, there would be no way to stop this.

Would a primary put our nominee in a better position to kick off toward the general election? Some people have argued that having a primary would enable our nominee to get more publicity, to "hone his message," and to "hit the ground running" for the general election. Others have argued that having a primary simply means that our candidates will raise and spend money beating up on other Democrats rather than on the Republicans.

A few thoughts on both positions... Recent experience is that the local media do a lousy job of publicizing local elections. In the City Council elections in recent years, it has been like pulling teeth to get WVIR to attend a press conference. I remember one press conference in 2002 where WVIR had agreed to come, but never showed up because a bear stuck in a tree in a median strip on Route 29 rated higher for them. Aside from WINA, no other radio stations offer much local news. The newspapers usually at least come to the press conferences, and they occasionally write stories on them. So I am not persuaded that a local primary would lead to more publicity for our Democratic candidates for the 57th House seat.

I question how much of a publicity bounce our nominee would get. In terms of "honing his message," I have to say that I have a hard time envisioning how this primary campaign would actually work. It is possible that there would be a number of public fora, where some "honing of the message" may occur, but that would be the case for a convention fight as well. It is possible that there would be an opportunity for a lot of political advertising, where a message might be honed; that is certainly more likely to occur where there is a primary than where there is a convention, though a candidate with a lot of money to spend could certainly advertise to draw supporters to a convention as well.

However, such advertising would probably not be "message" as much as "here's who I am." As for "hitting the ground running," this primary is 4 1/2 months from the general election. The general population will not even begin to pay attention until September. What a candidate needs to do in June, July and August has little to do with what has just happened in a primary. She will need to be raising money, she will need to be knocking on doors and going to fairs and festivals, but there is no particular reason to think that this will be any different if she has come out of a successful primary or out of a successful convention or caucus. On the other hand, let's look at the opposing arguments.

Recent experience tells us that conventions can be just as divisive as primaries, just as negative, just as embittering. Would candidates raise and spend money on attack ads in a local primary? We have little real experience to guide us, but I suspect the answer is, "Probably not, unless there was some very divisive issue." And the real question is whether candidates would be more likely to raise and spend money on attack ads in a local primary than they would with a convention or caucus. Experience from other areas that have switched back and forth, and therefore have some basis of comparison, suggests that any candidates in a convention situation who advertise for the convention tend to direct ads at their supporters -- "John Doe calls on his union buddies to come support their friend," or "Jane Smith -- it's time for a woman for a change."

When we have a primary going on anyway, might having a convention make the 57th District process seem "closed" by comparison? I confess that I have a real visceral reaction to this argument that colors my assessment of it. I never agreed with this particular criticism of the Democratic Party when it was made by the Democrats for Change folks in late 1999 and early 2000. The Democratic Party has always been as open as it can possibly be to new blood. 35% of our City Committee members elected in December, 2004, are new to the Committee. The Howard Dean campaign, Meetups, and other grass roots efforts that have sprung up in the last year have resulted in a great influx of new volunteers and new energy.

I don't see how we can possibly be more open than we are. Anyone who has come to any of our conventions in the last 4 years has to be impressed with the reality that we make it about as "open" to new people as possible. I think that what people want in terms of openness in the Party is not just "Gee, I can vote too," but "I can meet the leaders, look them in the eye, shake their hands, and tell them what I think."

Or "I can walk up to the Chair and offer to put together a Party website, and I can talk with a human being about how I can help." Or "I can get together and talk politics with other like-minded people." That is more likely to happen when we bring Democrats together in a convention hall than when voters file into voting booths as individuals.

I have voted in primaries, and I have participated in mass meetings and conventions. I never got involved in the local party when I voted in a primary; I did right away when I came to a mass meeting in Charlottesville in 1980. As for how other people might "perceive" the party, I can't account for how media folks and Republicans might try to spin it.

Does one system over the other impose more barriers to entry for people wanting to run for office? I suspect that the answer is that a primary would impose more of a barrier to entry, simply because of the perception that it would be a more daunting task to win a primary than to win a caucus or convention. There may be a sense that a successful primary candidate would need to appeal to more voters to win.

But that is a matter of perception rather than reality. In a multi-candidate field, you might be able to win nomination by sticking with your base, without having to branch out to other possible constituent groups. If you can win a nomination with 550 voters out of 1,600 who come to the polls at a primary, is that really any different from bringing 550 voters to a convention or caucus where only 1,000 participants show up?

And just look at what went into the efforts to organize for the Iowa caucuses -- they were expensive for the candidates even though there was no primary. We in the Party can do some things to help make contacting voters less expensive, but with about 30,000 voters available to be contacted, and about 6,000 voters who voted in the 2004 Presidential primary, it's going to be a big job whether it is done in the context of a primary or a convention/caucus system.

Well, I think I have discussed every aspect of every issue that folks have raised in connection with this choice. We will be meeting in the next few days to discuss the choice, and I invite you to respond [through e-mail to cvllelaw@ntelos.net ] to let me know your thoughts.

Lloyd Snook (Electronic mail, March 9, 2005)