{"id":9535,"date":"2018-02-20T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-20T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=9535"},"modified":"2018-02-20T16:09:07","modified_gmt":"2018-02-20T21:09:07","slug":"womens-democratic-club-president-responds-to-cooper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=9535","title":{"rendered":"Women’s Democratic Club President Responds to Cooper"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following piece by Fran Rothstein, President of the Montgomery County Women’s Democratic Club, is a response to Jordan Cooper’s critique<\/a> of the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee’s (MCDCC) recent actions.<\/em><\/p>\n

As a lifelong Democrat and a 36-year resident of Montgomery County, I must protest Jordan Cooper\u2019s recent opinion piece, \u201cMontgomery County Democrats make a mockery of democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

I know what a mockery of democracy looks like, and Montgomery County isn\u2019t it.\u00a0 I grew up in Washington DC, where my parents were completely disenfranchised. They couldn\u2019t even vote for President until 1964. I grew up with no home rule at all.\u00a0 Even today, Washingtonians remain scandalously unable to participate fully in our democracy.<\/p>\n

Contrary to Mr. Cooper\u2019s assertion that \u201cthe Democratic Party of Maryland has long prioritized the party above the public interest,\u201d I see exactly the opposite in today\u2019s State and County Party.<\/p>\n

At the State level, Maryland Democratic Party chair Kathleen Matthews has worked tirelessly to reach out to the many new activists who have come together in new groups since the 2016 election.\u00a0 Some of these activists are outspoken Democrats; others are progressives active in new nonpartisan but progressive organizations. \u00a0She has met with them, she\u2019s invited them into the Party\u2019s big tent, and quite a few of them have joined the Woman\u2019s Democratic Club of Montgomery County (WDC), which I lead.<\/p>\n

At the County level, rather than the \u201cgross abuse of the public trust\u201d Mr. Cooper sees, I see a Democratic Central Committee striving to expand voter choice in selecting our representation.\u00a0 I happened to be at the most recent Central Committee meeting, when the Committee became the first in Maryland to endorse Del. David Moon\u2019s legislative proposal to create special elections to fill a General Assembly vacancies.\u00a0 Why is this important?\u00a0 If passed, a state Senator or Delegate vacancy in the first year of a term would trigger a special election, rather than being filled by Central Committee appointment as is now the practice.\u00a0 (When a vacancy occurs later in a term, the Central Committee would make a temporary appointment, with a special election held during the next Presidential election, thus avoiding the cost of a special election when a regularly scheduled election is on the horizon.)<\/p>\n

The vote that seems to have prompted Mr. Cooper\u2019s protestation was the adoption of a proposal to restrict candidates from running on the same ballot for a government office as well as the Central Committee.\u00a0 This makes great sense, for several reasons.\u00a0 First, it would avoid the possibility that a candidate may \u2013 intentionally or not \u2013 use public financing and traditional financing simultaneously.\u00a0 Second, it avoids the possibility of conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise should one person hold both positions.\u00a0 And third, from my perspective, is that it opens up more opportunities for the many newly energized Democrats to serve in leadership positions.<\/p>\n

Personally, I appreciate the County Central Committee leadership\u2019s willingness \u2013 indeed, enthusiasm \u2013 to engage in collaborative efforts.\u00a0 Among many examples, the Central Committee and WDC are working together to recruit and train precinct officials, a critically important function.\u00a0 Precinct officials are the ones who rally local residents to vote \u2013 certainly the essence of a strong democracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following piece by Fran Rothstein, President of the Montgomery County Women’s Democratic Club, is a response to Jordan Cooper’s critique of the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee’s (MCDCC) recent actions. As a lifelong Democrat and a 36-year resident of Montgomery County, I must protest Jordan Cooper\u2019s recent opinion piece, \u201cMontgomery County Democrats make a … Continue reading Women’s Democratic Club President Responds to Cooper<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mcdcc"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2tN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9535"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9536,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9535\/revisions\/9536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}