Hundreds of thousands of Democrats showed up Saturday for Texas' district conventions, where they continued the process of choosing presidential delegates for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The big crowds resulted in frustration and delays, and officials at some meetings warned the process won't be completed before midnight. Some delegates said they were switching sides.
In Austin, some delegates got fed up waiting at least an hour in traffic and abandoned their cars on the side of the road. They walked the rest of the distance to the Travis County Expo Center. Convention officials extended the morning sign-in period because so many delegates hadn't gotten the chance to register. Reports from Dallas also indicated delays. In Fort Worth, where officials had originally planned to hold three conventions in one high school, Democrats had to scramble to find space for their meetings, which finally were held at a sports coliseum, a community college and a convention hotel.
The first order of business at the conventions was to deal with the many challenges brought by both campaigns. Those challenges were likely to mean hours of procedural disputes before the conventions could get down to the business of picking delegates. Even then, Texas's delegate selection process won't be finished. The delegates selected Saturday go to the state party convention in June, where 67 of Texas's 206 delegates to the national convention will be selected.
While Clinton won Texas' primary vote, the delegate selection process now underway could result in Obama winning a majority of total Texas delegates.
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