State Party Chairman Brian Colón Brought to Tears

Today was the Democratic Party State Central Committee meeting at the convention center downtown.

The morning started off with a breakfast arranged by county First Vice Chairman Victor Raigoza on forth street and central at Nick’s Crossroads Café sponsored by Michael Padilla’s Company Altivus CRM Solutions LLC. The breakfast was very well attended. Both Congressman Luján and Congressman Teague were there along with Lt. Governor Diane Denish. Attorney General Gary King and State Treasury James B. Lewis attend along with State Senator Tim Keller and State Senator Tim Eichenberg. I also ran into Mayor Martin Chavez. I asked him if he was going to announce anytime soon but he said he is busy running the city and will look at that issue at a future date in time. I also ran into Richard Romero who is running to replace Martin Chavez in October of this year at the end of breakfast he was on his way to Santa Fe. Lt Governor Denish had some very good suggestions on how to improve education in a Win/Win for educators, students and the voting public. I will cover that in more detail later this week. Attorney General Gary King was defending his stand on taking non profits to court because he feels that they have crossed the line from education to non support of candidates when it comes to the voting public. It will be very interesting to see what the courts have to say on this issue. We had judges from all of the court systems at the breakfast this morning.

A number of people noted that CD1 Congressman Martin Heinrich was missing for the activities. I pointed out that he was off helping home owners understand the in and out of how to get the money from the Reinvestment and Recovery Act. Still he was missed by his friends and supporters.

By noon everyone was over at the convention center for the meeting. I missed the governor because I was dropping off my daughter for a camping trip. The first order of business was the resolutions. One was put forth to reduce the number of members to the County Central Committee. I was more then a little pleased to see it fail since the Democratic Party is a party of inclusion not exclusion. I would suggest that the rules committee look at a rule to require elected members to attend a percentage of the meetings or forfeit their position on the committee. I think this would clear up the problem they were trying to get at in the first place. The County Chair could appoint a replacement for anyone who went over the allowed percentage of meetings missed. The platform issue of supporting civil partnership came up and was voted onto the platform for support. As I said we are a party of inclusion not exclusion and while I would not want the church forced into doing anything they disagree with I still think that basic human rights should apply to all Americans. The state should not be in the business of handing out licenses for any church activity. Church and state should remain separate.

The next order of business was to elect officers. State Auditor Hector Balderas gave a very moving speech when he nominated Brian Colón for State Party Chairman. Brian was in tears about the part when it came to his mother and his father and all they had given him. I don’t think there was a person in attendance who could not completely understand his strong feelings of love and appreciation for all his mother had done for both him and his father. Chairman Colón received 100% support for his reelection to the chairmanship of our party. We are lucky to have him.

After the meeting we all went over to Chairman Colón’s casa to eat and be merry. We had a great deal to celebrate this year and the future looks bright for our party and our state. All in all it was a very good day to be a democrat.