What the Hell Is Going on with the SCDP?

The leadership of the Shelby County Democratic Party has entered John McCain territory today with the erratic behavior of Keith Norman. Let's go through what we know at this point. The printing of "official" ballot of the SCDP was tasked to a certain individual. He printed the ballot and then it was distributed to the Obama headquarters. The ballot was never shown to the SCDP Executive Committee. If it would have been then the "mistake" of it saying "vote no on all referendum" would have been caught and the ballots not distributed. This was discovered last week. Few the next few days, the issue of the ballot percolated until a press conference was announced for 11:30 Monday morning at IBEW headquarters. During these few days before the scheduled press conference, volunteers in the Party could have gotten sharpie markers and began blotting out the "mistake". That way the printed ballots would not have been a loss and Democratic candidates would have still received proper publicity.

That reasonable and free solution didn't seem to happen. 11:30 Monday rolls around and Keith Norman doesn't show up for the press conference. He might be a busy man, but even so his church is only like 2 miles away from IBEW. The local press, like David Letterman, doesn't like to be stood up. Amazingly, it is announced that the Steering Committee of the SCDP will meet at the Whitehaven Library to decide about the "official" ballot. So Norman can't go 2 miles for his own press conference but he can go all the way to Whitehaven for a Steering Committee meeting. It seems to me that this move is an attempt to keep certain Steering Committee members away and ramrodding through committee the keeping of the "mistaken" ballot. I don't know how the Steering Committee meeting went. We'll all know soon enough though.

Yet this wasn't the end of today's highjinks related to the "official" ballot. Turns out Teamster Union members were passing out the "mistaken" ballot at polling stations today. Why are you still distributing these "mistaken" ballots? Mr. Norman are you unable to stop the distribution of these "mistaken" ballots. Was that what you were doing at 11:30 today? Driving around town and collecting ballots to prevent the public from being misinformed. If you weren't doing that, then do you condone the spreading of a "mistaken" ballot? Because if so, it doesn't seem like a mistake anymore, but rather a conspiracy to forward a small group's agenda. Looking at this whole situation from that perspective, this conspiracy seems pathetically transparent and lowdown.

Mr. Norman's behavior seems erratic and judgment poor. I hope he and the Steering Committee did the right this evening and removed those "mistaken" "official" ballots. Lets try to build trust in the local party and show the voters it is not the vehicle of a small cabal of powerbrokers.

CALL OR EMAIL SCDP CHAIRMAN KEITH NORMAN AND URGE HIM TO STAND UP TO BACK ROOM POLITICS.


KEITH NORMAN, CHAIR

751-7154 (home) 830-0601 (cell)

751-0156 (fax)

keithnorman65aol.com

In an unrelated side note. Does anyone know how the County Commission voted on that Wal-mart issue? An anti-union company that economically strip mines local communities shouldn't be supported by our commissioners, especially the Democratic ones.