Kicking Butt in the Progressive Populist Caucus

This morning the Progressive Populist Caucus met at the Texas Democratic Convention. The highlight of the meeting was David Van Os announcing that he would run for State Party Chair. Van Os, who is a Jim Hightower-style progressive, has been at the forefront of the protests against the Iraq War since the beginning. He has led the fight for organized laber as general counsel of the AFL-CIO, and has fought the good fight, always representing the little guy, in his law practice. He ran for Attorney General and for the State Supreme Court in the middle of the Republican desert, when others could not be coaxed to run for statewide office as Democrats because the Republicans had a stranglehold on all the top offices, the legislature and the courts. He ably acted as Travis County Convention Chair, and deserves all of our votes.

Update:

Van Os got trounced by Boyd Richie. Richie had the machine in place, and Van Os' insurgent campaign, which just materialized in the last couple weeks, could not compete with Richie's long preparation for the election. Also, it seemed like some Richie supporters were spreading some nasty rumors about Van Os throughout the convention (that don't really bear repeating here). Also, another progressive candidate also ran an insurgent campaign at the last minute and split the vote (even though the combined vote of the two progressives did not match Richie's total). Van Os got about 19% of the vote of the delegates. We can all console ourselves with the hope that David Van Os will hopefully run for a statewide office in 2010!