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Local Democrats fired up for Denver

BY JAMES GELUSO, Californian staff writer
jgeluso@bakersfield.com | Saturday, Aug 23 2008 12:00 PM

Last Updated: Monday, Aug 25 2008 7:04 AM

You can’t blame Tiara Cox if she was a little tired at work this past week.

“I’m really excited. I’m not sleeping really well now,” she said.

Cox is heading for Denver, where she’ll attend the Democratic National Convention as a volunteer.

Her boss will understand. He’s Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, who is also going, as a superdelegate.

It’s Cox’s first convention. It’s Costa’s seventh.

Both Cox and Costa said it will be an opportunity to network with movers and shakers, although Costa said he plans to get some work done on legislation between events.

Cox isn’t exactly sure what she’ll be doing. And she’s not sure she’ll get a ticket into the main event, Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Invesco Field, the Denver Broncos’ stadium.

Kern County has eight members in its official delegation, not including Costa and Assemblywoman Nicole Parra, D-Hanford, who represent parts of Kern.

The delegation also includes labor figure and superdelegate Dolores Huerta and State Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter. But Florez and Parra are expected to miss the convention because of the state budget stalemate.

And then there are individuals, such as Uduak Ntuk, who is spending his last week of vacation for the year traveling to the convention. He spent his other vacation weeks campaigning in California, Nevada and Texas for Obama.

Ntuk got to be a delegate by winning an election at the Obama caucus.

“I wasn’t really pushing but I kind of feel like I earned it,” he said. He’d been the communications coordinator for the Obama campaign locally, in addition to his campaign work elsewhere.

Ntuk works at Chevron, which might be a surprise. But the stereotypes are wrong, he said.

“Just because you work in oil and gas doesn’t mean you’re a conservative Republican,” he said.

Sure, the convention isn’t where the nominee will be decided. But Ntuk said it’s still worth having.

“It’s making the voices of the voters official, just like the electoral college,” he said.

And, he said, it’s a chance for the two parties to make their pitches to the voters.

“It’s an opportunity to highlight and showcase the best and the brightest the party has to offer,” he said.

Bernita Jenkins has tried to make it to the convention before, but never succeeded until this year.

“I understood the process a little better,” she said.

She’s looking forward to meeting people who are excited about the party and the process, she said, although one of the people she most wants to meet is an assemblywoman, who might not make it.

Cox admits that part of the reason she’s so excited is that it’ll be her candidate on stage Thursday night. She first went to an Obama campaign meeting in January 2007.

Only a year out of college, she had to work to raise the thousands of dollars to go to the convention from her friends, family and church, she said.

Costa first went to the convention in 1980, when incumbent President Jimmy Carter was fighting a challenge from Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy.

With the modern primary system, the conventions today serve as “infomercials” for both parties, Costa said.