Courtesy of Deborah Lomando
Deborah Lomando, standing at center, talks with former Vice President Joe Biden during one of Biden’s campaign stops before the Nevada presidential caucuses earlier this year. Lomando is a delegate to this week’s Democratic National Convention, which will formally recognize Biden as the party’s nominee for president, albeit virtually.
Sunday, Aug. 16, 2020 | 2 a.m.
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The first time Deborah Lomando left the house after her double mastectomy last year was to go to a Southern Nevada organizing meeting for 2020 presidential hopeful Joe Biden.
Over a year later, Lomando will be a member of the 48-member Nevada delegation to the Democratic National Convention that is expected to nominate Biden as the party’s nominee for president.
This time, though, Lomando won’t be leaving her house.
The Democratic National Convention, which begins Monday, will primarily be a virtual affair. Delegates from across the nation will not travel to Milwaukee, which was awarded this year’s convention. There will be no large crowds, no festival atmosphere.
It’s another example of how the coronavirus has upended this election year.
Originally slated to begin July 13, the four-day affair was delayed more than a month to see if fears about the coronavirus might quell. They have not. The actual proceedings in Milwaukee will be sparse (the Democratic National Committee says the convention will be “anchored” in Milwaukee; Biden himself will not travel to Milwaukee to accept the nomination).
So delegates in Nevada and beyond will have to get festive at home.
Artie Blanco is a Biden automatic delegate — previously known as “superdelegates” — from Nevada and a member of the DNC rules and bylaws committee. Biden was her first choice, she said, and she caucused early for him.
Blanco was disappointed for many reasons not to be able to travel to Milwaukee. She’s reluctantly crossing off a visit to Miller Park, the home of the Milwaukee Brewers, from her to-visit list. Politically, she wanted to hear from locals what Democrats needed to do to win Wisconsin in 2020. Notably, Hillary Clinton lost the Badger State to Donald Trump in 2016. Along with Trump’s wins in Michigan and Pennsylvania, Wisconsin helped deliver the 2016 election to Republicans.
“I was happy that it moved to August because I thought, ‘OK, great, they’re giving us more time for us to handle this pandemic, for people to start taking this seriously’ and hoped that we would be able to still travel to Milwaukee, to be honest,” she said.
Blanco has attended past conventions, having been a superdelegate in 2016 in Philadelphia, where she ran into her father, a delegate from Texas.
“I wanted to be part of the convention because of the energy that you get from being in the convention, the energy though hanging out and meeting like-minded voters … but just the energy that comes around it, and the excitement and the hope that we can turn this country back around,” Blanco said. “I wanted to make sure that I was a delegate because we needed to correct a wrong that happened in 2016 and I wanted to be part of that.”
Being a delegate has long been on Lomando’s bucket list. She had faith in Biden, she said, before the former vice president even announced his candidacy.
“I met and talked to, got pictures with all the candidates, but I always believed that Joe Biden was the person for this moment in time,” Lomando said.
She’s not the only first-timer, either.
Mercedes Krause is a delegate for independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who suspended his campaign in early April. Krause said for years she would register as a Democrat to vote in the primary, and then change her registration back to independent. Now, though, she’s remained a Democrat.
A teacher, Krause said she’s been in contact with teachers around the country, doing training and discussing the upcoming convention through the National Education Association.
All three Nevadans expressed disappointment in not being able to attend the convention in person.
Krause, an Oglala Lakota, is active in Native American rights issues. She said that one of the biggest disappointments was not being able to do some of the engagement that she and activists from different states had worked on.
“We were going to have a big lodge outside of the main convention; there was going to be a lot for our community in Milwaukee,” she said.
At home, she said, it will be less exciting, but she’s hoping to set up watch parties.
“Definitely not as festive as it usually is,” she said. “I was excited and expecting the festivities. Specific to our Native community, too, they had so much planned.”
Krause wants to do it again, she said.
“Now I want to know what the in-person experience will be like. But who knows when that’s going to happen?” she said. “So I’m just going through the process. It’s been exciting, it’s been heartbreaking and I’m excited to complete this cycle, complete the process and get ready to get started up for the next round.”
Lomando said she was excited that the virtual layout would let her see more than she might have been able to had she been there in person.
“Going virtual with all of this is going to make more of the convention accessible to me as a delegate,” she said.
Lomando said she would have Biden paraphernalia up during the convention, and would be watching remotely with her friends. “I’m encouraging people I meet and talk to, and family members, to make sure that everyone has it turned on,” Lomando said.
Blanco plans to have her autographed Biden campaign sign and other paraphernalia set up behind her during the event. She’s trying to find the Harris sign she said she knows she has from the primary.
“I’ll be setting up my room to look and feel like a convention,” she said.
She said she would have videos of some past speeches going, with the crowd noises, to get the feel of a convention and “the excitement” going.
“I don’t know where we’ll be, maybe next time we’ll be in Houston, Texas, my hometown, and it will be a Biden-Harris reelection that we’re going to need to fight for,” Blanco said.
