Four women — one of them African-American and one Latina — kicked off official Democratic National Convention business Sunday morning with the message that this is going to be a different sort of convention. Different in its female clout, its openness and its appeal to younger voters.
“Fasten your seat belts and hold on,” Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius said. “None of us have ever seen anything quite like this.”
Sebelius is a co-chair of the convention along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and Texas state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte.
The women stressed the difference in a convention that will take advantage of new technologies and go well beyond the Pepsi Center to reach out to a broader audience. Delegates will be asked to use party phone banks at the convention to call potential voters back home and will be urged to each text-message someone in their states. Policy experts will answer questions from distant voters live online from the convention each evening. The entire convention will be translated into Spanish.
Pelosi said she believes the Democratic Party — including staunch supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton — will come together during a convention led by four strong women. She predicted that a Republican advertising campaign that suggests the party passed over Clinton, and thus women overall, will not hurt presumptive nominee Sen. Barack Obama.
“It shows the bankruptcy of their campaign. That’s a playbook we’ve seen over and over and over,” Pelosi said. “Women have the most to gain with the election of Barack Obama and the most to lose with the election of John McCain.”
Van de Putte, who had a catch in her voice as she described being chastised for speaking Spanish in grade school, said a hallmark of this convention will be “inclusiveness and accessibility.”
Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com
