Opinion: My delegate in Denver

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I have reported on government and politics for many years but never followed the minutiae of how delegates are selected to attend national conventions until this year, when I did a series of posts on both major parties’ efforts. Registered Democrats who got the word and signed up in advance -- and declared themselves for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton -- voted for delegates at caucuses around the state on Sunday, April 13.

I live in Rep. Xavier Becerra’s 31st congressional district, where four caucuses -- three for Clinton, one for Obama, reflecting Democrats’ vote in the Feb. 5 California primary -- took place. It was an extremely hot day for April, and the most popular guy at the Eagle Rock Recreation Center, where the Obama delegate voting took place, was the man selling paletas.

Most people who came marked their ballots and left, but a few hung around for the candidate speeches. State Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero dropped by the rouse Obama people to action. School board member Yolie Flores Aguilar came by as well. I recognized several current and former staffers for City Council President Eric Garcetti, many of whom came to vote -- I’m guessing -- for their former colleague, Christopher Arellano.

There were speeches by each of the delegates, then voting -- and a 61-61 tie between Arellano and Yosi Sargent, a dedicated Obama worker who spoke individually to each voter in the room and made an impassioned pitch. They ballots were recounted, twice, with the same result.

The Democratic Party rule for resolving such standoffs calls for a coin flip, Sargent picked heads, and the coin came up tails. When I caught up with Arellano at the convention Thursday, at a Starbucks across the street from California delegation headquarters at the Sheraton, he noted that the toss was captured on YouTube. So here it is.

I had met Arellano before, when he was running in a tough (and eventually painful) race for the school board and he was asking the Times editorial board for an endorsement. We went with a different candidate. He didn’t seem to hold it against me.

‘The whole idea is that you have to call friends,’ Arellano said of the delegate caucus process. ‘Friends are the only people who are going to come out on a Sunday and vote for you. You can call people to come and do something for Obama, but this is really a personal thing, to ask people to come out and drive who-knows-where and vote in a two-hour window. And the Eagle Rock Rec. Center is hard to find.’

Delegates pay their own way, so Arellano said he saved up money for the trip and for two new suits. He also honed his talking points, mostly to represent the interests of his employer, United Teachers Los Angeles (he is the union’s South Area rep) to keep Obama up to speed on No Child Left Behind. But he said he saw himself as representing interests of Latinos and gays (he married his partner on Aug. 9).

In Denver, Arellano met up with three friends who drove from Los Angeles for the event, and was able to get them the most sought-after ticket in town: a pass to Obama’s Thursday night acceptance speech. Earlier, he talked, he worked, he partied -- including going to a party thrown by Yosi Sargent, who came to Denver to work for Obama even though the coin toss didn’t go his way. He went to a party at which state Sen. Alex Padilla introduced himself to delegates. He went to a Barbara Boxer event. Michelle Obama showed up at a Human Rights Campaign lunch. He helped his Garcetti friends and acquaintances staff a ‘Rising Stars’ party, then got stuck there until 3:30 a.m., taking down tables and tents. He had to get up two hours later to give an interview to FM 92.3, ‘The Beat.’

He showed me the text message he got from Obama regarding his VP choice. ‘So on Sunday I got one from Joe Biden saying hello,’ he said. ‘And the same day I got one from Hillary.’

He was ‘a little sore,’ he said, because he didn’t get his VP email before the news was out. But he’s up to date on his tech, carrying both a BlackBerry and a Treo. He first understood the importance of texting at the 2004 convention, where he saw Garcetti thumbing away on his Treo during the proceedings.

‘Throughout the entire convention you can’t really hear,’ he said. ‘So texting has been absolutely essential. You take a look on the shuttle to Pepsi Center, and everyone is on their Treo or BlackBerry,’ he said.

Arellano was about to get on a shuttle to the stadium when I left him. He was beaming. ‘This is going to be so great,’ he said.