About 1,400 Democratic Party memberships submitted by the United Auto Workers are the subject of a furious dispute in the race for party chair between incumbent Mark Brewer and challenger Lon Johnson.
The issue is when the memberships were submitted in relation to the party’s 5 p.m. January 25 deadline for hand-delivered memberships to be eligible to vote at Saturday’s party convention. With the UAW aggressively backing Mr. Johnson, the status of those 1,400 memberships is critical.
Initially, the party, citing its call to convention’s deadline for hand-delivered memberships, denied the 1,400 applications. Depending on which side is doing the talking, either all 1,400 were turned in Monday, January 28, or they were turned in prior to the deadline with payment for some of them submitted the following Monday.
The Johnson camp cited what it said was the party’s precedent of accepting payment subsequent to the membership application and was livid when Mr. Brewer rejected the membership applications.
Late Monday night, the party’s Appeals Committee met, overruled Mr. Brewer and ordered the memberships declared valid. Two sources, who declined to be named, said the UAW has an effective majority of the committee.
The Brewer camp, seeing this as a UAW power play, is now looking at an appeal to the party’s credentials committee and possibly the floor of the convention.
Submitted without comment.
