Marin’s Biden delgates throw support to vice president

Delegates from Marin County said this week that they have no reservations about switching their support to Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Marin delegates were among 330 California delegates, some of them superdelegates and alternates, who participated in a teleconference meeting on Monday. Just a day after Biden announced he was withdrawing from the race, it was reported that the 330 delegates voted unanimously to shift their support from Biden to Harris.

“We heard from Rusty Hicks (chairman of the California Democratic Party). We heard from Nancy Pelosi, and we heard Maxine Waters talking about their support for Kamala Harris,” said Marin delegate Crystal Martinez, an aide to Supervisor Mary Sackett. “Then we brought it to a vote.”

The Democratic National Convention begins Aug. 19, but the Democratic National Committee plans to conduct a virtual roll call of all delegates to select a presidential nominee by Aug. 7. The pledges from California have already put Harris over the 1,976 threshold she needs to secure the nomination.

“It’ll be a little anticlimactic,” delegate Tom McInerney, a former San Anselmo councilman, said of the upcoming Democratic convention. “If it was up to me, I would have just voted at the convention, but I’m OK with voting early this time.”

Before Biden announced he was dropping out of the race, Rep. James Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina, said he favored staging a mini primary prior to the convention to give anyone interested in running a chance to win the nomination.

“I think the idea of the mini primary was very idealistic,” said Marin delegate Susan Bolle, founder of the Bay Area Coalition, a collective of 40 organizations focused on Democratic voter turnout in swing districts. “I think we need to be pragmatic now.”

She said delaying a vote until the convention with the hope of attracting more people to watch on TV, when voting in some states begins Sept. 23, was “like unicorns and rainbows.”

“I couldn’t understand how anyone thought that that was a realistic window of time to campaign,” she said. “The notion of an open convention sounded very chaotic and impossibly divisive.”

Martinez said, “I think a fast turnaround is the only thing that would make this work. We have a really short timeline. Unless we’re unified behind a candidate, we’re not going to put ourselves in a position to win.”

Marin delegate Brian Colbert, who is competing in a November runoff in hopes of becoming Marin’s first African American supervisor, said, “I’m glad that the Democratic Party is coalescing around Vice President Harris to be our nominee. I’ve personally endorsed her, and I look forward to working hard to ensure we elect Democrats this November from the top of the ticket to local races like mine.”

McInerney said he was “surprised and shocked” by Biden’s miserable performance in the debate with Donald Trump on June 27. McInerney said it prompted him to begin talking to other delegates about whether they should consider alternatives to Biden.

“The feedback I was getting essentially from all the Democrats I came in contact with was unanimous,” McInerney said. “They had serious reservations based on Biden. Fortunately, Biden made the right call.”

Bolle said, “It was a painful, painful process. All of the people who’ve been working on this campaign to elect Democrats up and down the ballot breathed a deep sigh of relief on Sunday.”

Alternate delegate Gabe Paulson, a Larkspur councilman, said, “It’s been a roller coaster.”

Paulson said he participated in the Monday call but abstained from voting because he was an alternate.

The Marin delegates all said they believe Harris is the best choice for taking on Trump.

“She’s the most popular candidate by far in the party right now,” McInerney said. “She’s the only one that can unite everybody. I think everybody recognizes that. I don’t think there was anybody that could have made a credible challenge to her.”

Bolle said, “She brings so many different skills to the table. She is very charismatic. She is an incredibly articulate prosecutor, and this is a big case that she is prosecuting right now. Trump and Project 2025 are so dangerous to this country that no one should be sitting on the sidelines right now.”

Martinez said, “Kamala holds values that are important to the American people, including lifting up the middle class. She’s got what it takes.”

Nearly a half dozen Marin residents attended the Republican Convention as delegates earlier this month.

“It was awesome,” said Tom Montgomery, a Marin Republican central committee member who attended as a delegate.

Montgomery said he approves of Trump’s choice of JD Vance, an Ohio senator, as his running mate.

“He brings youth to the party,” Montgomery said. “Let’s face it. Most of us are a bunch of old White guys.”

Montgomery said he got word of the attempt to assassinate Trump two hours after landing in Milwaukee where the convention was scheduled to begin two days later.

“I gotta tell you it was a little freaky,” he said.

Montgomery, however, said the shooting, which resulted in the death of a bystander, didn’t inhibit delegates at the Republican convention.

“It helped bring everybody together,” he said, “and made us more determined than ever.”

Marin GOP Chair Jack Wilkinson chided Democrats for their top-down approach in selecting their presidential candidate.

Wilkinson said, “They’re playing pretty fast and loose with their own rules.”