Trust, and fairness, will be in short supply at the convention

By Jon Ralston

Friday, Feb. 22, 2008 | 2:01 a.m.

The moment perfectly encapsulated the potential for a donnybrook this weekend at Bally’s, when the scariest group of marauders will invade the Strip since the NBA All-Star Game.

During an interview on “Face to Face,” I asked Helen Foley, a co-chairwoman of the Obama campaign here, if she trusted Clark County Democratic Party Chairman John Hunt, who was sitting next to her and will preside over the party convention this weekend, at which thousands of delegates are expected.

Foley paused for a moment and then answered. “I want to,” she said of the man who defied the state party during the caucus and sided with a lawsuit that challenged the at-large caucuses right after the Culinary Union endorsed Barack Obama.

“I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt now,” she continued in a very controlled voice. “This convention is too important not to. We’re going to put the past behind us, and we’re going to have a successful convention.”

In politics, as too often in life, the past is never really forgotten. And I got a sense from Foley that she and the other Obama folks remember Hunt’s vehemence in defending the lawsuit and his unbridled attack on “Face to Face” of Culinary boss D. Taylor, whom he called a “bully.”

That came just a few days before the Clinton campaign divided the Culinary, won most of those at-large precincts the unsuccessful lawsuit had sought to erase and carried the New York senator to a popular-vote win although Obama won the potential national delegate count by a 13-12 margin because of the party’s unorthodox apportionment rules.

Perhaps another reason the Obamaites are not sure they can trust Hunt is that he brings to mind one of the cardinal rules of life: Never trust anyone who is perpetually happy.

Of all the party chairmen I have known in two decades-plus of covering politics, Hunt is the most effervescent, a veritable geyser of ebullience.

“I will tell you from every inch of my being that this is fair-handed,” Hunt gushed on the program Thursday. “It will be fair. I don’t care who steps out of line, we will try to do everything humanly possible to make sure our most precious thing, the right to vote, is protected. That is my paramount obligation, and I take that dead seriously.”

Ah, the right to vote. Precious indeed. But what will occur at Bally’s on Saturday will be about the right to be a convention delegate and then express a preference through a Byzantine process that makes those caucus rules look transparent.

I would like to be as optimistic as Foley feigned and as Hunt may very well be. But the county chairman also said Thursday that of the two campaigns, Obama’s seems the more paranoid about Saturday’s events a statement that surely won’t make the Illinois senator’s troops feel, well, less paranoid.

That’s because the backdrop has changed dramatically since Nevada was the center of the Democratic Party’s political universe Jan. 19. As all of the speculation has revolved around the near-guarantee that Obama will have a lead in pledged delegates after the last primary, in Puerto Rico on June 7, it’s no wonder that everywhere, including here, his campaign wants to protect those pledged delegates.

Why? Because the labeling is incorrect the delegates are not officially pledged until after the state convention in May, so anything could happen Saturday.

That’s why the Clinton campaign chairman tried to boost attendance by his candidate’s supporters with an e-mail pitch this week and why the national Clinton folks are importing people from outside Nevada to participate in the convention process. “We are looking for folks to make their own way to Vegas on Friday the 22nd to be there for the organization meeting at night, and then help with the convention in the AM,” the e-mail from the campaign reads.

Maybe they just want help manning phone banks to get people to Bally’s. But the chances of questions being raised at the convention about who should be inside the hall and who shouldn’t be are pretty substantial, I’d guess.

And if that happens, questions also will be raised about the presidential preference results, which could mean a recurrence of the internecine bitterness that exploded after Jan. 19. Just when the Democrats thought it was safe to be friendly again, along comes a convention to screw it all up.

Which leads me to yet another question, this one about John Hunt:

Why is that man smiling?