Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> TalkLeft

Legal Commentary

: TalkLeft

Who's On the DNC Credentials Committee?

By Jeralyn

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution provides some details about who will serve on the DNC Credentials Committee and decide what to do about Florida and Michigan.

There will be 186 members. Howard Dean gets to choose 35 and he has already done so. The AJC says they are people who have their primary allegiance to Dean, rather than Clinton or Obama.

The states choose the remaining members, with their allotments determined by population.

The three co-chairs have old ties to Bill Clinton.

In addition to those appointees, Dean has named three co-chairmen for the committee, all with ties to the Clintons. Alexis Herman was Bill Clinton's secretary of labor. James Roosevelt Jr. was an associate commissioner at the Social Security Administration when Hillary Clinton was first lady. Eliseo Roques-Arroyo was a consultant for Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2000.

As to the committee's options: [More...]

DNC rules provide the committee could:

• Uphold the sanctions and bar all the delegates;

• Allow all of them to be seated; or

• Create some kind of hybrid where half the delegates get to attend.

The committee could also decide how many of each state's delegates get awarded to which candidate.

That's not the end of the story though.

On the first day of the convention, Aug. 25, the Credentials Committee presents its report to the seated convention delegates. The report, which will contain the decision on Florida and Michigan, must be approved by the delegates — including all the superdelegates.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 23, 2008 (boomark / email).