By Thomas Tracy
When the Democratic National Convention kicks off this August, upwards of 30 delegates will be harking from the Borough of Churches: eighteen for Hillary Clinton, twelve for Barack Obama, according to a New York State Democratic Committee unofficial list. While the delegates will be coming from all over, many familiar names can be found, including borough State Assemblymembers Peter Abbate, Annette Robinson, Nick Perry and State Senator Diane Savino, who will be casting a vote for Clinton, and State Senators Eric Adams, John Sampson and Kevin Parker, who will be rooting for Obama at “the big dance.” Other delegate notables include Bergen Beach resident and Clinton supporter Mitchell Partnow, who, at 21, will be the borough’s youngest delegate, former City Councilman Sal Albanese, an Obama supporter and Chris Owens, the son of former Congressman Major Owens, who is listed as an Obama delegate alternate. City Councilman Bill de Blasio, who was reportedly bucking for a delegate posting, did not make the final list, officials said. As Super Tuesday drew to a close, Obama eked out wins in both Rep. Yvette Clarke’s 11th Congressional District, where he received 55 percent to Clinton’s 42 percent, and Rep. Ed Town’s 10th Congressional District, where he garnered 58 percent of the vote. Although she was victorious in the 12th Congressional District in Sunset Park, the 8th Congressional District in downtown Brooklyn and the 13th Congressional District in Bay Ridge, Clinton truly bested Obama in the 9th Congressional District, where she received over fifty percent of the vote in neighborhoods stretching from Mill Island to Midwood. The 2008 National Democratic Convention will be the third for Abatte, who represented Brooklyn both in Los Angeles for Al Gore and in Chicago for Bill Clinton. Besides ensuring his candidate’s success, Abatte said that he’s mainly going to Denver to rally for the borough. “It’s always my goal to let people know that I’m from Brooklyn and what the needs of my district are,” said Abatte. “Because not only are we going to have a presidential candidate at the end of the convention, but we will be meeting some of the people who will be in that administration. It will be nice to have a voice in the White House.” Although he wishes that Clinton had already sealed up the delegate fight by now (as this paper went to press, Obama had beaten Clinton in the Potomac primaries and collected large number of delegates in Washington D.C., Virginia and Maryland) Abatte said that he’s not going to stop fighting until she’s in the White House. “I find her [Clinton] to be very qualified for the job,” Abbate said. “But I’m also selfish. I want a president from New York. We haven’t had one since Franklin Deleno Roosevelt.” “When someone is elected president, the state that person’s from usually does very well,” he said. “It would be nice to see some new federal facilities in Brooklyn.” As he prepares for his first Democratic Conven-tion, Adams said that he will be less focused on hob-knobbing with longstanding political staples and more focused on the loftier goal of “starting a new national political movement.” “I’m going to meet all of the new folks who are part of the Obama delegation and use this opportunity to start something new,” he explained. “It’s all about coming together with an empty legal pad and writing down the names of like- minded from non-traditional states like Iowa and Wisconsin who like us want to improve our government from the bottom up.” He said it was also exciting to be going into the convention knowing that Obama has “not only withstood the field, but is now leading the field.” Through it all, he said he is going to be thinking about his 94-year-old grandmother, who died earlier this year. “After I was elected to the State Senate, I visited her and she told me about all she went through as an African American woman in 1910,” he said. “Before she died she was so excited to learn that this country was poised to vote on not only a woman, but an African American as well.” “I think it’s important that her grandson will be participating in that process,” Adams said.
