Alaska Democrats are hosting their state convention Friday through Sunday in Anchorage. More than 500 party members from across the state are attending, and the event culminates in the selection of delegates to attend the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this July. Alaska Public Media’s Zachariah Hughes is covering the convention.
WALDHOLZ: Hi Zach.
HUGHES: Hi Rachel. How are you?
WALDHOLZ: Good. And Zach, spell out for us. What are we expecting this weekend?
HUGHES: Um… good question. (laughs) There are a couple of things we’re expecting. One is all the housekeeping that the Alaska Democratic Party needs to take care of in a year. So that means selecting representatives from different regions to kinda come together and represent the party. It means agenda setting. It means, just kinda, checking in and seeing what needs to be taken care of. And the second part, and I think the part that maybe this year is a little more exciting than most is that we still don’t have a Democratic nominee for president, so the delegates who are going to be going to the Democratic National Convention in July are going to get selected this weekend. And that’s hugely important for people who still feel like they have a dog in the fight over who’s going to be the Democratic presidential nominee.
WALDHOLZ: And Alaska Democrats in their primary this spring, they went pretty heavily for Bernie Sanders. So does that mean that Alaska’s sending in an all-Bernie delegation to the national convention?
HUGHES: Not quite. It’s proportionate so Sanders got about 81% of the votes in the caucus. There’ll be 13 delegates to caucus for Bernie or represent the Bernie Sanders campaign in Philly, 3 for Hillary Clinton, 4 more that are so-called superdelegates who represent people that’ve spent a long time within the Democratic party and then two alternates. And what’s going to happen on Saturday is that who those actual people are is going to be determine which for stakeholders in the party is a pretty big deal.