Why I'm running for a spot as an Obama delegate

Here's a letter I e-mailed earlier to those voting in this weekend's Third Congressional District Delegate Convention:

Fellow Democrats:

Thank you for signing up to participate in this weekend's Third Congressional District Delegate Convention. It's great to see so many people involved - especially those who have not been involved in the party until recently. Your activism is helping to better the Democratic Party of Oregon (DPO) as well as your respective county parties and house districts.

I know many of you through work in the Democratic Party, Bus Project, Oregon for Dean in 2003/04, etc., but there are a number of names I don't recognize. I'm always excited when I find names that I don't recognize - it means the party is growing.

My name is Jenni Simonis and I have been involved in the Democratic Party of Oregon ever since I moved to Oregon in 2000. Previously, I was heavily involved in the Texas Democratic Party, holding leadership positions in Democratic clubs in Galveston County (our party structure in Texas was considerably different than in Oregon). Since moving to Oregon, I have held a number of leadership positions within the party, including House District Leaders for HD 50 (Gresham), delegate to the Third Congressional District, and alternate to the DPO's State Central Committee. With the exception of a health-related hiatus in 2005, I have been a precinct committee person since 2000.

In 2006, I served as field director for the Multnomah County Democrats, and likely worked with many of you to re-elect our governor and legislators. I've also been involved in the Bus Project since 2002, where I did work with the tech committee, helped to plan canvasses to the Gresham area, and went on canvasses to elect Democrats around the state. In 2003 and 2004, I served on the Oregon for Dean Steering Committee, which eventually became Democracy for Oregon.

I turned 30 earlier this year and have been married almost 11 years. My husband Andy, who was born in Vietnam and adopted by an American family in Sandy, OR, is a veteran of the first Gulf War. We have a six year-old daughter, Abby, who goes to Hall Elementary in the Gresham Barlow School District. Andy works as a department manager at the Gresham Office Depot and I work from home building web sites for candidates and non-profits. We've lived in Gresham ever since moving to Oregon.

This year, I've been working on a variety of campaigns, including making calls through the online center for Barack Obama, helping to turn House Districts 49 and 50 blue, and defeating Gordon Smith. We need more Democrats elected at all levels, from city council to the White House, to ensure that Obama's ideas and issues make the biggest impact possible.

This will be my second time to run for a national delegate position - the first time being 2004 as a Kerry delegate. I feel that it is very important that we have variety in our delegation in order for it to more accurately reflect our Congressional District and state - not just in terms of gender, race, and sexual orientation, but in areas like geography and economic status. In 2004, all the delegates from Multnomah County came from well west of I-205 - east county had no representation and Clackamas County had very little representation. East county has the state's fourth largest city - Gresham with more than 100,000 residents - and it had no representation whatsoever. To me, this is a huge problem, as the issues and concerns of the eastern side of the county are often very different than that west of I-205. By having almost our entire delegation from west of I-205, more than half the district had no representation on the delegation - whether as a delegate or an alternate.

Also, we've had very little representation from those from lower income levels. In 2004 when I brought up this issue to the Kerry Campaign, I was told it was not their concern since those people couldn't afford to go to the convention anyway. This is absolutely not the attitude we should have. People from lower income levels absolutely should be encouraged to participate - there are ways to help them pay for the trip. Discouraging those in the lower middle income level and below from participating in this process is just one of the many ways we've lost this category of voters. We absolutely have to encourage people in these income levels to participate - otherwise we don't accurately reflect our district and we ignore a large section of the population that could be strong Democratic supporters and voters. As someone whose family is well below the median income level for the county, one of my biggest issues is poverty, and I have been working for some time to encourage more participation from those who are in the lower income levels.

The area I'd like to focus on as a delegate or alternate to the National Convention is to help unite the Party. I've had a lot of experience with hotly contested primary races in Texas, and I've done a considerable amount of work in helping to unify supporters from campaigns after the primary is through. In 2006, I did quite a bit of this work to help bring Pete Sorenson supporters like myself to do everything they could to ensure our Democratic governor, Ted Kulongoski, would be re-elected.

In that vein, I'd like to help unite the supporters of Senator Obama and Senator Clinton so that we can work as one to defeat Senator McCain this November. The delegates attending the convention as representatives of the Clinton campaign will be some of her most influential and connected supporters from the 50 states. This event would be a great way to network with them, build on the unity work that has already been done, etc. I feel strongly that we need people in Denver helping to do this work to ensure that we are 100% unified by the time the General Election season is in full swing come mid-September. I've worked very hard over this election cycle to ensure that at the end I would have a good working relationship with Clinton supporters so that I could assist in the very important work of bringing our party together.

I don't want to go too long, so I'm going to end this here. If you have any questions, suggestions, etc., I am always happy to hear from you. I'm best reached by e-mail at dems@nu-look.net. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to seeing you this Saturday as well as at canvasses and other events between now and November.

In unity,

Jenni Simonis
Precinct Committee Person, Pct 5850 (HD 49)

Candidate Statement: http://restricted.dpo.org/delegates/vp/1487.html
More about me: http://www.votejenni.com

Technorati Tags: 2008 election Clackamas County Multnomah County