SATURDAY, JAN. 28 - S.C. Democrats will select their presidential nominee today and – spoiler alert – it will be Barack Obama.
That is because, just by attending one of the dozens of Democratic precinct reorganizations set for today, S.C. Democrats will be casting a vote for Obama, the Democratic incumbent who is running unopposed for his party’s nomination.
The real news is the meetings are the first step toward selecting South Carolina’s 62 delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Party leaders expect lots of people will be interested in becoming national delegates because the convention will be in nearby Charlotte the week of Sept. 3.
“Our delegates have to pay their own way,” said Amanda Loveday, the state Democratic Party’s executive director. “This is an opportunity for national delegates to attend one of these once-in-a-lifetime opportunities at a lesser cost than it would have been to go to Denver,” site of the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
Twenty-four counties will hold precinct meetings today, including Lexington and Richland counties; 22 counties will hold them March 3.
Lexington County Democrats will meet at 10 a.m. at the Woodmen of the World Building, 3620 Augusta Road, beside the U.S. 1 flea market. Richland County Democrats will gather at 124 polling places throughout the county beginning at 10 a.m.
Participants in today’s precinct meetings, sometimes called “firehouse caucuses” in political parlance, will elect delegates to their respective county conventions. The county conventions will elect delegates to the state Democratic convention, scheduled for May 11-12. The state convention will elect delegates to the Democratic National Convention.
There is one caveat: You can’t be a delegate if you voted in the Republican presidential primary on Jan. 21. (In fact, you can’t even attend today’s precinct meetings).
Deborah Breedlove was a South Carolina delegate for Obama in 2008 and is helping organize the Friarsgate 2 precinct in Irmo. But she is not planning on running for a national delegate’s spot; she wants to see others get to experience that she had in 2008.
“It’s such an important convention for us because Charlotte is next door,” she said. “It’s going to be wonderful to watch how South Carolina is going to rally around the president.”
S.C. Republicans already have selected their preferred nominee, overwhelmingly voting for Newt Gingrich in last weekend’s primary, which attracted 600,000 voters statewide.
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