Demos help Rocky get convention slot

Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson is going to the Democratic National Convention in Boston in July as a delegate for former presidential hopeful John Edwards.

The irony is Anderson has never supported Edwards, a U.S. senator from North Carolina.

Utah party bosses used "strike-outs" to ensure Anderson, who didn't have to campaign for the Edwards delegate slot as other delegates did, has an at-large delegate slot. And that means some long-standing, rank-and-file Democrats don't get to go.

Anderson said he only asked Democratic Party chairman Donald Dunn if there was a delegate slot for him after several national high-profile Democrats asked the mayor if he was going to Boston.

"Some believe that as mayor of the state's largest city, I should be there. Donald said fill out this form and check the Edwards delegate box. I said, 'I'm not for Edwards, I'm for (John) Kerry,' and Donald said that was fine," Anderson said.

This will be Anderson's first time as a national Democratic delegate. The mayor snubbed the state and national Democratic parties at the 2000 national convention in Los Angeles. Instead, he spoke at the so-called "shadow convention" — run by anti-establishment Democrats. He then left Los Angeles without meeting with the Utah Democratic delegation.

Anderson "has matured, and he wants to be a part of this (Boston) convention, and as the head of the largest city in the state we wanted him to go," says Joe Hatch, a Salt Lake County councilman who, as head of the John Kerry effort in Utah, pulled the very confusing delegate-picking strings to get the mayor a delegate slot.

"Everything we did was totally legal, we didn't change one (delegate selection) rule. In fact, we followed the DNC (Democratic National Committee) rules to ensure we had the required delegate diversity,"Hatch said.

The confusing machinations that got Anderson into this year's convention began in February, when a Democratic straw poll vote in Utah gave Kerry 15 delegate slots, Edwards nine delegates and the others going to party elected bosses.

Hatch agreed with Maura Carabello, the Edwards Utah campaign boss, that he would accommodate the Democratic Party requirements for male/female and minority representation in his delegate pool.

"But in filling female, Native American, Hispanic requirements and so on, I just didn't have a slot for the mayor," Hatch said. "So I went to Maura and asked that she, in her Edwards delegates, take care of Rocky."

Internal Democratic rules allow bosses to "strike out" other candidates in Anderson's case, which allowed the mayor to get an at-large slot, which bumped out some Edwards delegate candidates in last Saturday's state Democratic convention.