Feels like Democratic spirit (continued)

THE RHODE ISLAND delegation is studded with familiar faces — Reed; Lynch; Lieutenant Governor Charles Fogarty; Secretary of State Matt Brown; Attorney General Patrick Lynch; House Speaker William Murphy; former Providence mayor Joseph R. Paolino Jr.; former lieutenant governor Richard Licht; AFL-CIO president Frank Montanaro; former gubernatorial candidate Myrth York; Reback; US Representatives Patrick Kennedy and James Langevin; Cicilline; Senate Majority Leader Teresa Paiva Weed; and fundraiser Mark Weiner, among others.

There are other delegates less widely known to the public, but who nonetheless play an important role in the state’s Democratic politics. I encountered a trio of these venerable activists — Allene Maynard (sporting a broad-brimmed hat with a growing collection of buttons, including one reading, "Regime Change 2004"); Kathy Hinckley, 65, Kennedy’s director of constituent services; and Edna O’Neill Mattson, 68, a Community College of Rhode Island administrator — while looking for the charter bus to a delegation event on Monday afternoon. The lifeblood of each of these delegates is imbued with politics, and they can spin tales and crack wise with the best operatives.

Hinckley, for example, grew up in South Providence, where her father was involved in 10th Ward campaigns. It was a time, she recalls, when the names of additional voters would be gleaned from tombstones and while working the streets in a soundtruck, "People would throw tomatoes at you." Hinckley, who recalls shaking John F. Kennedy’s hand at Providence City Hall as a young woman, never imagined that, after working for Joseph Doorley, Paolino, Bruce Sundlun, and other elected officials, she’d wind up in the employ of the late president’s nephew. Lest one think Hinckley is concerned only with public affairs, she — like O’Neill Mattson — remained quite tickled by her passing encounter Monday with Ben Affleck.

For this trio of old friends, the convention, as Maynard puts it, "[is] like the realization of a dream." Speaking before the opening night at the FleetCenter, she said, "I can’t wait to get out there and rah-rah."

Such enthusiasm steels the backbone of Democratic politics, but both parties are striving mightily to reach out to young voters in the 18- to-30-year demographic — a potentially decisive bloc — this election season. Since young adults have increasingly walked away from voting participation since the highwater mark of 1972, the danger is that few people will be left to one day take the role played by old-time party activists.

Some academic experts, such as Harvard’s Thomas Patterson, believe that youth voting will be up in this year’s election, particularly because of concern about the war in Iraq.

Certainly, young people were in evidence during the runup to the DNC, and one of the convention speakers on the first night, Michael Negron, was chosen to symbolize the youth vote. During the Rhode Island delegation event Monday afternoon aboard the Ibex, the youth flag was represented by the likes of Meghan McBurney, 24, whose family has a long history in state politics (her father is a state senator from Pawtucket); Bobby Gondola Jr., 20, of Needham, Massachusetts, who was at the convention as part of an internship for Salve Regina University in Newport; and Emily Sullivan, a recent graduate of Roger Williams University, who is about to join a US Senate campaign in South Carolina.

McBurney, who was weaned on politics and works in the computer department at the General Assembly, thinks young people are more mobilized for this year’s election. As she notes, "This election is key to the future of young people," on issues ranging from college loans to Social Security. "They basically need to wake up and let their voice be heard," she says.

Sullivan was more pessimistic. "I still think there are a lot of young people who don’t want to be involved," she says. "They feel like their vote doesn’t count."

Such a belief on the part of young people defies reason, of course, after the 2000 election was decided by so few votes in Florida and a number of other swing states. For the most part, though, the relative lack of young faces at the DNC suggests just how the Democrats still have to go. Only two of Rhode Island 36 delegates — Amy Gabarra, 26, the scheduler for Cicilline, and Angel Taveras, 33, a Providence lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2000 — are under 35.

IN RHODE ISLAND, Democrats have done a better job in reaching out to women and minorities — an effort that can be seen in Melba Depena’s prominent role in helping to organize the delegation.

Depena might be slight in stature, but it was her prowess as a political organizer that led chairman Lynch to hire the 33-year-old native of the Dominican Republic in December as the Democrats’ executive director — an unorthodox move in a party heavily composed of Irish-American and Italian-American politicians.

Lynch, who still seems bemused by the slightly curious circumstance of Depena’s hiring (in a Providence Phoenix story last year, she had criticized Rhode Island Democrats for sometimes taking Hispanics for granted), nonetheless considers himself fortunate. "She’s my right arm," he says. "For someone who’s never done this before, she’s done an amazing job [with helping to organize the delegation]."

Depena, a former president of the Rhode Island Latino Civic Fund, is the first to acknowledge that Democrats need to do more in winning support among minorities, particularly in this year’s presidential election. She expressed satisfaction, though, that Rhode Island’s 36-member convention delegation surpassed a national Democratic goal of including at least 40 percent women and minorities.

As the Republicans work to extend their control of the White House and Congress, it remains to be seen whether the fast-growing Latino population in the US offers more of an edge to Democrats or the GOP. It might be a strange question in heavily Democratic southern New England, but the political leanings of Latinos — from the super-conservative Cuban expatriates of south Florida to California’s Republican-leaning Mexican-Americans — tend to be far more varied around the US. Democrats argue, of course, that anti-immigrant Republican policies do enough to drive politically aware Hispanics into the arms of the Democratic Party.

YOU CAN TAKE politically minded Rhode Islanders out of Rhode Island, but you can’t take the politics out of the Rhode Islanders. That said, few of the legislators in the delegation were interested in commenting on the latest plot twist at the General Assembly — former speaker John B. Harwood’s stated desire to reclaim the speakership.

Speaker Murphy seemed unconcerned about the possible challenge as he made the rounds Tuesday on the Ibex.

Senator Teresa Paiva Weed (D-Newport) declined comment, saying, "At this point, I think as Senate majority leader, I should defer to the House."

Asked the same question while munching on a deli sandwich during a Tuesday luncheon at the Boston Marriott, state Representative David Caprio (D-Narragansett) quipped, "That’s spicier than the mustard." Caprio dodged a fuller answer, saying, "Right now, the state is operating without a budget, and we still have yet to resolve the most contentious issue that the state has faced in many years, and that’s the casino. That’s my focus, to try to ensure that we enact a responsible budget and address the casino issue fully." Asked whether he has any interest in the speakership, Caprio, who has sided against Harwood in the past, says, "I haven’t considered it, because I don’t know who will be the elected reps in November."

When it comes to the national uncertainties of the November election, the action is just beginning.

Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis[a]phx.com. Portions of this article originally appeared on www.bostonphoenix.com.