Salt Lake County Democratic Convention -- Education Ignored

Last Saturday was the annual Salt Lake County Democratic Convention held at Highland High School.

Most of the convention was the typical, mundane, run-of-the-mill boring convention that usually occurs. I won't get into that, other than to say that the new Executive Committee show a lot of promise.

However, I'll talk about the 8-9 AM time slot.

8-9 is reserved for caucus meetings. The Educators' Caucus met, excited to hear from many people. Usually, we have so many people want to come and speak to us, we have trouble finding time to conduct endorsement votes or other caucus business.

Now, granted, the educators' caucus was much smaller than ususal. We have been standing-room only in the past, and last week saw only 12 of us. That was partly due to a large UEA meeting happening at the same time.

However, the number of people who came to speak to us was disappointingly low. Rep. Carol Spackman-Moss (D-Holladay) came and addressed us on behalf of Salt Lake Mayoral candidate Rep Ralph Becker (who got stranded in Seattle). Outgoing County Chairwoman Megan Risbon, now running for State Party Treasurer, came in. State Chairman Wayne Holland stopped by for a moment, but didn't get the chance to speak (he came at the moment we had a line). 2nd Vice Chair candidate Lisa Johnson came and addressed us (and unanimously recieved our only endorsement of the morning). And, we had some represntatives from Democracy for Utah come and talk about a training that Democracy for America is doing here in Salt Lake in June.

Other than that, nobody came.

Given the momentum that the referendum has given our party recently, you'd think that education would again be on the top of every list.

But, sadly, it wasn't. Instead, the educators sat alone in their classroom in an empty corner of Highland High School.

-Bob