The Democratic
National Committee hosted its first American Majority
Partnership Summit on August 23-25 in Las Vegas,
where 600 participants, including more than 100 LGBT
activists, gathered to strategize about the Democratic
Party's goals.
The five caucuses
that make up the DNC's American Majority Partnership
are the Asian Pacific Islander, black, Hispanic, LGBT, and
women's caucuses. DNC chairman Howard Dean
convened the caucuses to increase their participation
and maximize coordination among them.
DNC spokesman
Damien La Vera said that among some of the ideas they
discussed was a new emphasis on reaching out to LGBT youths
and LGBT people of color, and using the Internet to
broaden the DNC's outreach.
Another
development this year was a renewed focus by state parties
on increasing LGBT representation. Last year the DNC
adopted new rules requiring state parties to formulate
and submit LGBT delegate inclusion plans, but the
parties were not explicitly required to have numeric goals
for LGBT delegates. Though critics feared that the rules
were too flimsy, at least 45 states have now set
specific targets for the number of LGBT delegates who
will represent their party--that's up from just
16 states that had hard numeric goals in 2004.
"It's extraordinary to have that much progress
in just the years," Dean told The
Advocate.
Dean was
"delighted" by the number of red states that
decided to add numeric goals to their process.
"I wouldn't like to admit that I was
surprised, because of course my goal is to get to 51. But I
thought if we added 10 states [to the original 16], I
would start to have a really significant process. But
tripling? I was shocked," he said.
Dean said having
more LGBT representation would both promote
understanding about gays and lesbians within the party and
affect the positions that the Democratic Party adopts
for its platform. "The issues are obviously
very heavily influenced by the significant powers of
delegates. So there's likely to be strong platform
planks about equal rights, "don't ask,
don't tell," hate crimes, and so
forth."
Party delegations
also become farm teams for future candidates. "I
actually got my start as a county chairman and was a
delegate to the national convention," said
Dean,
"so it certainly does build a bench in the LGBT
community for running for higher offices." (Kerry
Eleveld, The Advocate)
