The nomination isn’t going as planned.
Via Las Vegas Sun:
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders scored a surprise victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Saturday at the Clark County Democratic Convention, where Sanders won the largest number of delegates a month after losing the Nevada caucuses.
Long lines, a packed convention center and the controversial suspension of the county party’s credentials chair threatened to disrupt the operation of the convention throughout the day. But after five hours of registration and check-in, thousands of people had packed into the Cashman Center, and by early evening, the delegates had been counted and Sanders announced as the winner.
The county convention was the second in a three-step process for Nevada to choose its delegates to send to the Democratic National Convention this summer. The first was the February caucuses, the results of which are used to apportion 23 of the delegates Nevada will send to the national convention. The second step, the county convention, is when delegates are selected to the state convention in May. The third step is the state convention, when 12 more delegates are apportioned based on attendees’ preferences.[…]
But the biggest threat to the convention’s success appeared to be the suspension of the county party’s credentials chair early Saturday morning. Christine Kramar was suspended from her post after Clinton campaign officials raised concerns about her neutrality.
The issue came to the fore late Friday night, when Kramar learned from Sanders campaign staffers that the Clinton campaign was pressing for her removal. When Kramar showed up at Cashman Center just before 8 a.m. Saturday, she discovered she had been suspended for not showing up earlier.
In protest, Kramar and a few others staged a sit-in in the hall where the convention was held and were almost cited with trespassing.
Kramar said state Sen. Aaron Ford sat on the ground with the group and helped smooth over the situation to prevent further law enforcement involvement.
“At the end of the day, no one is going to care who is to blame,” Ford said. “At the end of the day, I was able to broker a compromise between the interested parties.”
Ford also passed along a password to the event registration account from Kramar, which allowed registration and check-in to proceed smoothly. (Kramar contends registration could have continued without her password, saying other county party officials had access to the registration information.)
The concerns over Kramar’s neutrality surfaced when Clinton’s general counsel, Marc Elias, sent a letter to county party Chair Chris Miller on Wednesday, requesting that Kramar be removed from her post. In the letter, the campaign alleged Kramar had shown bias by exposing confidential information to Sanders’ campaign and making personal attacks against members of the Clinton campaign.
A Clinton campaign official said some of that sensitive information included data about delegates and alternates, along with contact and other proprietary information.
Kramar denied the allegations and said she had tried to make the credentialing process as transparent as possible. Kramar said that when something was wrong with one of the registrations — such as when someone’s information didn’t match the official delegate list, or he or she had registered multiple times — she would email the two campaigns to let them know.