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The Alabama Democratic Party is fighting with the Democratic National Committee – again.
In a letter to DNC chairman Jamie Harrison on Monday, which continued several weeks of arguments, ADP chairman Randy Kelley threatened to send a separate slate of delegates to the Democratic convention in Chicago later this month to challenge the slate of Alabama delegates selected by the DNC. Kelley called the matter a “race case” and mostly blamed the entire ordeal on former Sen. Doug Jones.
Jones has maintained that he had nothing to do with the Biden administration selecting a number of Alabama delegates that differed from the selections of ADP leadership. Such selections by the party’s nominee are allowed within party rules.
“(The DNC) cooperated and collaborated with an effort to pick fake, yes fake, delegates to represent Alabama at the 2024 (convention),” Kelley’s letter states. “And at the same time, they refused to recognize the duly elected delegates in the ADP. They refused to seat the delegates elected by the majority Black Alabama State Democratic Executive Committee; but with alacrity, they appointed the fake delegates chosen by ad hoc group led by a former White senator.”
In an email to al.com, Jones called those allegations “total bullshit.” Harrison, also, has seemingly had enough of Kelley’s complaints, telling the ADP chair in a letter obtained by APR, that he should stop sending “misinformation and miscommunication” to DNC-selected delegates.
In that same letter, Harrison pointed out that ADP missed delegate-selection deadlines, and then missed deadlines to challenge the DNC-selected delegates.
The trouble over delegates began when President Biden rejected a number of delegates selected by ADP. Biden rejected 21 of the 34 district delegates selected by ADP and then rejected 16 of the 24 Party Leaders and Elected Officials (PLEO), at-large and alternate delegates. In total, the Biden administration rejected 37 of 58 state delegates from Alabama. Biden, as is his right under party rules, then replaced those delegates with a list of his preferred Alabama delegates.
ADP leaders have insisted that Jones was behind the rejections and replacements – utilizing his friendship with Biden to undermine Kelley and ADP vice-chairman for minority affairs Joe Reed, with whom Jones has clashed.
Jones has maintained that he had nothing to do with Biden rejecting the delegates but that he did assist the administration in compiling a list of potential replacement delegates.
The ordeal continues a six-year battle between two sides of the ADP – a fight that has not been waged along racial lines, but instead along lines of progress and loyalties. At the center of the fight has been a move, led by Jones, to recast the term “minority” to mean more than Black. Jones was able to gain control of the state party, with an assist from the DNC, in 2018 thanks in large part to a redefining of that term, and the subsequent introduction of several new minority caucuses within ADP.
Those new caucuses, many of which were comprised of Black members, lessened the power Reed held as chair of the Black caucus. And it prevented him from holding the power to hand select ADP chairmen – a power he held for years – and other leadership positions. At the same time, the new caucuses injected new life into the party, allowing for young people and other groups to take some level of ownership of the party.
But two years ago, Reed found the votes to install Kelley, his longtime ally, at the top of ADP and regain control of the party. Ever since, there has been one fight after another over the new bylaws that expanded the minority definition and the resulting new caucuses, many of which Kelley and Reed tried to disband. Along the way, the national party has also been involved in an attempt to force ADP to remain in compliance with DNC bylaws that adhere to the expanded definition of minority.
And there does not appear to be an end in sight to the drama.
