Daly, Longo
By Tim Redmond
The race between Chris Daly and August Longo for regional director of the California Democratic Party has gotten a blog lot of blog press — far more attention than this low-lvel internal party stuff garners. Frankly, most people have no idea what a regional director does, or why it ought to matter to them.
But there’s a lot more going on here than what the cynics see as Daly looking for a new job when he’s termed out of office. (By the way, this isn’t exactly a job — the regional directors aren’t paid. It’s a volunteer position. And other than the chance to move up in state party leadership, it’s not a job that carries a lot of power or influence. Honestly — how many of you even knew that Longo was the ten-year incumbent?)
At the last state convention, there were signs everywhere that the Howard Dean wing of the party, the young, tech-savvy activists who were coalescing around Barack Obama, was getting restive. You saw it at the Resolutions Committee, where a handful of party-reform measures popped up, and were nadily shot down by state party Chair Art Torres. You saw it when Hillary Clinton was booed over Iraq. The Old Guard kept control, but you got a sense that the energy was all on the other side.
And now that Obama’s in the White House, that reformer energy will be even more visible in Sacramento this weekend. The Daly-Longo race won’t by itself change the party, but it will be a signal about its future direction.