Update [2008-5-19 1:51:1 by N in Seattle]: WA Democratic Chair (and superdelegate) Dwight Pelz endorses Obama. More below...
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Many of you will, I'm sure, remember the name James Yee. He's the US Army chaplain who was arrested in 2003 under suspicion of espionage because he ministered to prisoners at Guantanamo. After ruining his career, the government eventually dropped all of the ridiculous charges against him. Ray Rivera of the Seattle Times wrote a superb special report series about the case in 2005.
Yee was honorably discharged from the Army in 2004, and still lives in western Washington.
On Saturday, James Yee was elected to represent Washington's 9th Congressional District as an Obama delegate to the DNC in Denver.
As relayed by Kossack emmettoconnell on the website of the Thurston County Democrats, Mr. Yee had this to say:
Next, I am extremely humbled by the support everyone in the 9th Congressional District showed me today. Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! - to all those who voted for me, and for sending me to Denver. It is an honor to be reprenting [sic] our 9th Congressional District and all of you at the national convention. You all have inspired me beyond words.
I wish I could give you a full report on the results of Saturday's Congressional District caucuses. It has been frustratingly difficult to find out the distribution of delegates between Obama and Clinton, much less the identities of those who were elected. While I still expect that the overall numbers came to 34-17 for Obama, which will eventually result in 52-26 when the at-large and pledged PLEOs are added next month, that distribution hasn't yet been confirmed.
I do know who was elected from WA-07 (Obama 7, Clinton 2) and WA-01 (Obama 4, Clinton 2). Kossack Daniel K gave us the names of the Obama delegates in WA-08 (Obama 4, Clinton 2); unfortunately, Casey Knowles, the now-18-year-old who was the child in the stock footage used in Clinton's "3am phone call" ad, didn't make the cut. Reading between the lines of Yee's statement, it appears that WA-09 went 3-2 in Obama's favor.
I expect that the distributions in the other five CDs went as follows:
- WA-02 (6 delegates) -- Obama 4, Clinton 2
- WA-03 (5 delegates) -- Obama 3, Clinton 2
- WA-04 (3 delegates) -- Obama 2, Clinton 1
- WA-05 (5 delegates) -- Obama 3, Clinton 2
- WA-06 (6 delegates) -- Obama 4, Clinton 2
One final note, about one of the WA-07 Obama delegates. Iraqi-American Majid al-Bahadli is a resident of my own Legislative District. The story of his journey from Iraq through refugee camps and somehow to Seattle and American citizenship is remarkable.
Update [2008-5-19 1:51:1 by N in Seattle]:
To the surprise of few, Washington Democratic Chair Dwight Pelz announced his endorsement of Senator Obama while I was writing this diary. I guess I should have been checking my email.
I've been saying for some time that Dwight and the other uncommitted Washington Democratic National Committee superdelegates would endorse right after the CD caucuses. After all, until Saturday we had zero pledged DNC delegates. Sure, we had a very good idea of how many would go to each candidate, but we hadn't yet gone through the full process of electing them.
Dwight's background is as a community organizer, so IMHO he was always going to go for Obama. I believe he delayed in part as an overreaction to previous chair Paul Berendt's very early endorsement of Howard Dean (in 2003). BTW, Berendt was elected as a delegate pledged to Clinton from WA-03.