On a Saturday afternoon in late August 2010, Wilson County Democrats filled the second floor courtroom to elect a new Dem Party chair. Boykin was out. The WCDP needed a new person in.Millicent Graves served as the first-vice chair for the Party and was unamiously voted in as the new chair. By default, Graves became the first African American woman to chair the position.
Truth be told, it appeared as if those chosen to replace vacancies were already picked prior to citizens gathering at the courthouse. Oddly, in this "special meeting" there were only a select few who could actually vote. Why so?
Let us explain. Only "organized precincts" carried a vote. Out of the 24 precincts in Wilson County only 6 were organized at this time under the leadership of Chris Boykin. They were Taylors, Oldfields, Spring Hill, Black Creek, Wilson D and Wilson J. After a quick observations of these organized precincts you'll see the majority of them are in predominately white voting areas around the county.
One of the first things Graves stated she wanted to concentrate on was organizing more precincts.
A meeting was scheduled in September 25, 2010 to work on organizing precincts before early voting began the next month.
After all was said and done, that Saturday afternoon with the exception of Coleman, the secretary and Treasurer who remained in their positions, the following surfaced as the new Dem party leaders: Millicent Graves, Chair; Asa Gregory, 1st Vice, and Jason Kessler, 3rd Vice.
And as we exit the month of August, one year later, there's more to share about the road we've trod from there to here. September blog posts will bring stories of organizing precincts and asking questions some never bothered to ask. And we'll definitely be leading up to the one year later article Dave DeWitt submitted to the public called "Wilson County Sheriff's Race Gets Heated. This time around, we'll be dealing with the facts not fiction.
Her tenure can best be described as a "Fill-in for the Drummer."
1 comments:
I am glad to see how much progress the county and Democratic Party has made n the past year. We have a sheriff I think most people would agree is far better than what we had. He has done a lot to clean up the corruption in what was a shameful Sheriff's Department. (Though I am disapointed that J T Bass is still on the force. Thas is a shame and blimish on a otherwise excellent job by our new Sheriff) Now we have a new chairperson who wishes to move the party forward so that all the people will have a voice in how things are done. Even though there is still a cancer in the department (JT BASS) I am proud of the job our new Sheriff had done. We are so better off in so many ways than we were a year ago.
Karen ELLIS
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