Another Democratic candidate wins a delegate
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012By all accounts, they’re throwing out the delegate for Randall Terry. But now I guess the Democrats are stuck throwing out delegates left and right for various floating fringe candidates.
Louisiana is not hospitable for Obama Democrats
According to the state party rules, any candidate who reaches the threshold of 15 percent of the vote in any of the seven congressional districts gets a proportional share of that district’s delegates. It appears that Wolfe easily cleared that bar in the 7th Congressional District in Acadiana and southwest Louisiana, and probably also in the 3rd Congressional District, which encompasses the heavily Cajun country stretching from New Iberia to Plaquemines and St. Bernard. While the state Democratic Party has not yet commented on the results, it would seem that Wolfe is eligible for one or two delegates out of the six apportioned from each of those districts.
In the 7th District, Wolfe beat Obama outright in Cameron Parish, 30 percent to 28 percent. In the other parishes that are in whole or in part in the district, he finished second but won 24 percent of the vote in Acadia, 25 percent in Calcasieu, 23 percent in Evangeline, 24 percent in Jefferson Davis, 16 percent in Lafayette, 14 percent in St. Landry and 29 percent in Vermillion.
He had a strong, though not quite as uniform, run in the 3rd District, where, for example, he won 28 percent in St. Bernard — where Obama was held to 51 percent — and 29 percent in Lafourche, where Obama only received 39 percent of the vote. […]
I love this self-awareness of the political situation.
The outcome was news to Wolfe. “And I was last on the ballot, ” said Wolfe, apprised of his success Sunday afternoon.
Actually in terms of making a mark — all things being equal, you would prefer to be last on the ballot within a long list rather than anything beyond third. Other reasons for his strong showing… his name is Wolfe, which is catchy. And perhaps this came through in the voters pamphlet:
Wolfe, who has lost a congressional bid in Tennessee, said he was in the race to offer a progressive alternative to Obama who, he said, “has mesmerized, anesthetized and effectively disabled the left. They have been turned into stone by his charm, his eloquence and his huge intelligence.”
This is better news than if he had been running off the tea party gambit.
Looks like things are getting tougher for Wolfe. Do we have the whiff of a full blown political scandal, or is this just political manuevering from one of her Presidential candidate rivals, playing that kind of hard nosed political tactic Obama used when he forced Alice Palmer off the ballot for his first Illinois legislative seat?:
But one of Wolfe’s other Democratic primary rivals — Floridian Darcy G. Richardson who finished fourth on Saturday — does not find credible Wolfe’s claims to have spent so little, and has written Democratic Party officials asking that he be removed from the May 29 Texas primary ballot for his failure to file the FEC reports.
In an email Tuesday to Texas Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Richie, Richardson, identifying himself as “one of President Barack Obama’s little-known Democratic challengers,” wrote that Wolfe had clearly exceeded the $5,000 threshold in filing fees alone — $1,000 in New Hampshire, $1,000 in Missouri, $1,250 in Louisiana, $2,500 in Texas and $2,500 in Arkansas.”
Not to mention, Richardson wrote, that “Mr. Wolfe has also traveled to at least two states, New Hampshire and Arkansas, spending a couple of weeks in the former state where he also purchased newspaper ads in the state’s largest newspaper, the New Hampshire Union-Leader, and reportedly ran radio spots and hired paid staff from the Occupy New Hampshire movement. More recently, it has also been brought to our attention that Mr. Wolfe conducted an extensive round of robocalls in Louisiana where remarkably, according to newspaper reports earlier today, he apparently won a handful of delegates on Saturday, March 24th.”
Of course, what his delegate will do at the Democratic convention — hm… throw a pie at one of Obama’s delegates?