PHILADELPHIA – The new chairwoman of the Alaska Democratic Party says supporters of Bernie Sanders are re-invigorating the party. But along with the new enthusiasm, the Alaska Sanders supporters also bring deep wells of dissatisfaction.
Casey Steinau of Big Lake became chair of the Alaska Democratic Party in January. Even though the state’s registered Republicans outnumber Democrats nearly 2-to-1, Steinau is an optimist.
“Alaska is moving toward the purple, at the state level, and this is how it’s going to happen: with the people who were inspired by Sen. Sanders and who come to the party and want to be involved and engaged and help make a
difference,” she said Tuesday, while the roll-call was underway to nominate Hillary Clinton for president. “The party is unifying! We’re getting it together, we’re moving forward!”
Then, right after the nomination, scores of Sanders supporters – Berniecrats or Sandernistas, as they sometimes call themselves – walked out of the arena. It was a protest convention delegate Jill Yordy, of Fairbanks, helped organize. Yordy says state and national party leaders must make room for progressives.
“They need to actually show, with integrity and honesty, that they can open the doors and let people in, and let people be part of the process without trying to manage or direct how the party goes,” said Yordy.
She was state director of the Sanders campaign and used a crowdfunding website to raise more than $3,000 for her trip to Philadelphia. Her complaints about the party range from the
general, about exclusion of their ideas, to the specific, like the hiring for staff jobs within the state party.
“Those are positions that are often not announced publicly,” she said. “There’s no application process. It’s all about who you know. And that I think it’s a disservice to Alaska Democrats because it means we’re potentially missing out on some of the best candidates to help move the party forward and get progressive goals into Alaskan government.”
Alternate delegate D’Arcy Hutchings, a librarian from Anchorage, posted a video to explain the walk-off protest to her Facebook followers
“It wasn’t meant to be a fit about Bernie not being elected, which could be seen as childish or sore losers, that sort of thing. That wasn’t what it was about,” Hutchings said in the self-filmed statement. “It was really about us saying that we aren’t going to stand by and let this entire convention go by without our voices being heard. We’re not going to let this go by being a giant Hillary party.”
The next morning, at a breakfast session, Hutchings heard the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, R.T. Rybak, apologize for what leaked emails revealed: That some party officials were biased against Sanders. To Hutchings, his words were insufficient. She shouted over him several times, using her go-to slogan when confronted with what she sees as an unfair process: “This is what democracy looks like!”
One of Hutchings’ grievances has to do with “superdelegates.” The national party created a role for unbound “superdelegates,” in the 1980s, to give party stalwarts more say in who gets nominated and ensure the continuation of party values.
Hutchings says it’s not right that even though Sanders won the Alaska Democratic caucuses by a huge margin, three of the state’s four superdelegates voted for Clinton Tuesday night.
She named them: Casey Steinau , the party chair, National Committeeman Ian Olson of Fairbanks, and National Committeewoman Kim Metcalfe of Juneau.
“I would like to see a public apology to the Alaska people that they swayed our votes from 80 percent Bernie, to, at this convention, making it 70 percent Bernie,” Hutchings said.
She acknowledged that superdelegates are free to vote as they wish, but she says they should have followed the will of the voters.
Hutchings says she’s voted Democratic her whole adult life, roughly 15 years, but she wasn’t involved in the party structure until this spring. She says the exclusion she felt at the state caucus and after has cemented her commitment. She was a delegate at the state convention and now she’s on the party’s central committee.
“And you’d going to continue to see me on this path. They have radicalized me,” she said.
Chairwoman Steinau says the party is responding. She says she’ll broaden the hiring process for any vacancy among the party’s four paid staff.
“I think that is absolutely a priority, and I hear that, and I am with them,” Steinau said.
The party is also considering ways to reform the superdelegate system, she said, following a resolution of the state convention.
Liz Ruskin is the Washington, D.C., correspondent at Alaska Public Media. Reach her at lruskin@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Liz here.
