Among the nearly 4,700 delegates gathered in Chicago this week for the Democratic National Convention: United States senators and representatives. Top state officials. Leaders of major advocacy groups and labor unions. Democrats aspiring to become one or more of the above.
And hundreds of people with full-time jobs unrelated to politics, known only within their communities for the political work they do in their spare time.
The youngest delegates are teenagers attending their first convention before they have even voted in their first general election. The oldest have well over a dozen conventions under their belts.
Here are three of them.
Polly Baca, 83, Colorado
Polly Baca was in Chicago when it exploded: standing inside the Blackstone Hotel on Aug. 28, 1968, looking down at baton-wielding police officers storming through a protest that she had been part of minutes before.
She was 27, and it had been a traumatic year. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. Ms. Baca, an employee of Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, had been at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles the night Mr. Kennedy was killed. Brimming with grief and anger, she arrived in Mexico City to see her sister just as the police there attacked student demonstrators.
In Chicago, against the windows of George McGovern’s suite, she watched an officer drag a protester by the hair, and she burst into tears.
More than half a century after that year, which ended with the Democratic Party splintered and Richard M. Nixon preparing to take the oath of office, Ms. Baca, now 83, is back in Chicago for her 16th Democratic National Convention. She has attended every one since 1964. In 1980 and 1984, she was a co-chairwoman, the first Hispanic woman to hold that position.
This time, she said, her overriding emotion is “awe.” She believes President Biden has been the most effective president since Lyndon B. Johnson. And while she supported Mr. Biden until the moment he withdrew, she said, she is enthusiastic about Kamala Harris and the prospect of electing a woman of color.
That prospect is particularly resonant because what she remembers most about her first convention — when Mr. Johnson was nominated in Atlantic City, N.J., in 1964 — was that the arena was full of white men. Outside were members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, a multiracial group of delegates challenging the state’s all-white official delegation.
“I was just a spectator, but I was just in awe of that,” she said.
Ms. Baca, the Mexican American daughter of a farmworker, grew up in a time when signs in store windows said “No Mexicans or dogs allowed,” and when, even as a college graduate, she would most likely have been limited to jobs as a secretary, teacher or flight attendant.
But after the convention in 1968, she became more deeply involved in politics. She led the Latin American Research and Service Agency, served in the Colorado House and was the first Latina elected to the Colorado Senate.
She said she had always been passionate about civil rights — she attended the marches on Washington in 1963 and 1968 — and immigrants’ rights. But one of the most important issues to her now is climate change, she said, “because I worry about my grandchildren.”
She sits on the board of her alma mater, Colorado State University, and tells students: “It’s so important to be involved in our democracy. It is such an honor and a privilege, and the best way to get involved is join a political party.”
“If I can get to the point where I can talk to the president and be on the presidential staff or be somebody that votes in the state legislature, coming where I come from,” she said, “if I can live the life I’ve lived, then surely you can.”
Shawnté Rothschild, 46, Arizona
The day that Shawnté Rothschild was scheduled to speak at a state party meeting about why she should be named a delegate, her aunt had just died, and she almost decided not to go.
But she went. She gave a five-minute speech about her identity as a Black, queer Arizonan; about her work leading an account management team in the health care industry and coordinating community groups for L.G.B.T.Q. youth in Maricopa County; and about her desire “to be in spaces that shape our entire country.” Then, she went home to help plan her aunt’s funeral, and later, she got the call from a friend: “Girl, you were selected.”
Ms. Rothschild said the most important issues to her were reproductive rights, the economy and health care, including mental health care. Being a survivor of domestic violence informs her support for abortion rights, she said: “What happens to our bodies should be no one else’s responsibility.”
Heading into the convention, she was most excited about attending L.G.B.T.Q.-focused caucus events and panels, and events focused on disability — to hear firsthand what party leaders in those areas were working on.
“I’m a ‘Hamilton’ fan,” she said with a laugh, “so who doesn’t want to be in the room where it happens?”
Ms. Rothschild is running for a school board seat in her town, Maricopa, but has never held elected office. She started to become involved in community affairs, she said, because the people who answered her questions when she moved to Maricopa always seemed to be school board or City Council members.
She came to understand that the halls of power were not “this secret society that you have to belong to” — that even if she was new to politics, she could get into a position where her neighbors and fellow party members would listen to what she had to say.
To her family and friends, “politics is like, ‘OK, that’s on TV,’” she said, “but now regular me, everyday person,” is a delegate.
Her community chipped in to enable her to travel to the convention in Chicago as a first-time delegate. A friend sent her $100 for Ubers. Her son contributed $18.
“To be able to take what I see, to sit in these meetings, to go through these bylaws and learn these policies, and then to be able to articulate that in a manner to where people have never experienced that and then they walk away and see the importance and how that translates from federal level to our daily life — that’s magical to me,” she said. “Because there’s nothing worse than not having a voice in your own future.”
Christian Figueroa, 19, California
The first political rally that Christian Figueroa attended, when he was 13, was for Ms. Harris, a senator at the time, as she began her first presidential campaign in 2019.
His family had always emphasized to him the importance of giving back to his community, and as he prepared to enter high school, having a prominent presidential candidate from his home state seemed like a good opportunity to learn about the political process. So he went to a rally in Los Angeles.
“It really is an understatement to say it had an impact on me,” he said. He remembers strongly identifying with Ms. Harris’s description of her upbringing and her own parents’ emphasis on community service. Almost immediately, he started looking for ways to become involved in politics.
He joined a Democratic club in Los Angeles and wrote postcards to voters in Georgia and Pennsylvania. After Ms. Harris ended her campaign in late 2019, he began phone-banking and writing postcards on behalf of Mr. Biden, and he volunteered to help his county’s Democratic Party with down-ballot races. Eventually, he got an internship with the California Democratic Party, focused on organizing.
He is now a sophomore at Stanford University, majoring in history. He was involved in the College Democrats of America, serving as national press secretary, but recently decided to switch his focus to organizing on his own campus as president of the group Students for Harris.
On Monday, during a brief break from proceedings at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, Mr. Figueroa said he was excited to meet people he recognized from social media and to attend organizing trainings — “as many as I possibly can, to see how I can improve as a youth organizer,” he said.
His top issues are education, including student debt; L.G.B.T.Q. rights; and climate change. He said that, as a gay man, “I want to grow up in a world where I’m valued and I feel like I’m safe.”
Unlike many members of Generation Z, he enthusiastically supported Mr. Biden; he raised his hand to be a delegate well before the president dropped out. But he has been struck by the burst of excitement among his peers since Ms. Harris became the nominee — and by the symbolic significance of being a delegate for the woman who first inspired him.
“I just got so passionate during that rally. I was not really into politics at all during that time, so it really was a blank slate,” he said of the event in 2019. “It’s kind of crazy how full-circle moments like this happen in politics.”
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