So the race for Utah Democratic Party Chair has gotten pretty crazy this year, and I'd like to tell the story of why, who, and how. I'll provide some links to articles, but I won't actually quote them.
So this all began when incumbent chair Peter Corroon announced he would not be running for re-election. He had taken over for another previous chair after the predecessor resigned for health reasons. Corroon has been a pretty moderate chair, and oversaw the loss of our last Congressional seat, but not much else. The election for a new chair was set for June 17 (in two days now).
Nine candidates soon appeared, and I would generally classify them into three groups. First were the "uniters/establishment" group, which included
Nadia Bowman (a relative political newbie, but experienced with recent campaigns) and
Rob Miller (arch-establishment, a former party vice-chair and treasurer). Second were the "Berniecrats", who generally based their campaigns on Bernie Sanders-esque motivations. These included
Julianne Waters,
Sarah Scott, and
Daisy Thomas. Third were the candidates I saw as "no-hopers" or single-issue candidates. These included
Neil Hansen,
Leonardo Gutierrez,
Ed Schwartz, and
Archie Williams.
The front-runners were the "uniters" Bowman and Miller, and it looked like it'd clearly be a race between those two and maybe a strong Berniecratic candidate. None of the others really had any hope. Then about two weeks ago, seven women came forward with a public letter accusing Rob Miller of sexual harassment, including unwanted touching and exposing his LDS garments to women (he was active LDS at the time the alleged harassment happened).
Miller denied everything of course, and some of his supported accused Bowman of orchestrating the allegations, as some of the women happened to be Bowman supporters. They claimed she had a reputation for shady tricks despite her political inexperience. Miller tried to hold on despite the allegations, and even attended a candidate forum, but after being publicly shamed by some activists,
he dropped out of the race, still claiming dirty tricks and the Democratic party itself. So, crisis averted, right? Not so!
A few days after Miller drops out,
a mysterious email by a "John Carmen" is sent to delegates (including myself), claiming misdeeds by other chair candidates as well. The email claims that Sarah Scott has an unpaid traffic ticket, Archie Williams is anti-LGBT, and that Daisy Thomas is a marijuana smoker that will turn party control over to her former boss. The email even helpfully provides an address with a family name... that happens to be a badly misspelled version of Bowman's maiden name. Naturally this email makes everyone angry, and a local political reporter says that
"The whole affair would seem like "House of Cards" if Francis and Claire Underwood took a bunch of allergy medicine and cough syrup before making plans to screw their political opponents."But wait, there's more! Yesterday, three days before the convention,
it turns out that some Democratic delegates are attempting to elect a candidate from the floor, despite that being a flagrant violation of party rules and liable to tear the party apart.
And so everyone is going into June 17th and the convention very, very high-strung. It doesn't help that the Democratic nomination for the special election in Congressman Jason Chaffetz's seat will also be decided at the convention.