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Conventions No Longer An Old Man's Game

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By JOEL STEIN Special to the Los Angeles Times

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 3, 2008

DENVER - Other than Walmart, politics is the only arena where old people get all the jobs. But the Democratic National Committee set a goal this year to have 10 percent of its elected delegates be young, which the party defines as 35 or under. I'm guessing they define old as Robert Byrd's parents.

California exceeded the 10 percent mark, largely because sneaky college Democrats persuaded the state party to hold many delegate elections on campuses. That'd be like Republicans choosing all their delegates in VFW halls. But the plan worked. California sent more young delegates - 49 - than any other state. "I'm sort of over the hill, washed up," said 27-year-old delegate Jeff Millman. "I was sitting next to two UC Davis students who were 20, and they were delegates."

I also heard that there was a lot of hooking up among the youth delegation. "It's a mass orgy! It's awesome!" said delegate Dan Schneider, 31, who, admittedly, was pretty wasted and totally sarcastic when he told me that at a party at 2 a.m. After about 10 belligerent minutes spent mocking me and my reporting skills, Schneider told me that despite my assertions to the contrary, the young delegates were not dorks. "If they have to campaign and caucus to win, they have to be ebullient. If that means dynamic, if that means attractive, so be it. They're not nerdy." And, after enough beers at high altitude, I began to agree with him.

But the ringleaders of the campus vote push? Not ebullient enough, it seems. Nick Warshaw, 21, the president of the California College Democrats, and Rocky Fernandez, 30, the president of the California Young Democrats, each managed, somehow, to lose their election for delegate.

"I got my butt kicked," said Warshaw, a senior at Claremont McKenna College. "I lost to an older gentleman who took off two months from work." Warshaw, of course, has taken 21 years off work.

The downside of having so many young delegates was that it jammed up the after-party scene.

"It's a lot harder to get into these things than in Boston (in 2004)," said delegate Becca Doten, 29. She tried to get into Wednesday's "Unconventional '08" party, hosted by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. "You needed to call someone inside and tell them to come out and get you," she said.

Doten was elected to be a delegate at a downtown Los Angeles restaurant when only one guy showed up who wasn't dragged along by a friend in the running. So all four wannabe delegates delivered speeches directly to him. It was the same campaign strategy used by Chris Dodd, only for Doten, it worked.

Schneider claimed he even won over a lot of his moderate Republican friends this week. "I'm on the floor texting them. I've sent 3,000 text messages over the last four days," he said. "They want to play Super Nintendo and watch sports and hit on hot chicks. But if you get them involved, then they vote correctly." Still, as much fun as I was having because of the 10 percent youth rule, I couldn't help but feel as though young people stole the one massive party old people throw for themselves. I just hope that this week at the Republican convention, the GOP doesn't skew so not-old. We have to leave those people something.

Joel Stein is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

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