Idaho Democrats kick off their 2016 state party convention Thursday. It runs through Saturday. Party leaders expect nearly 400 delegates at the Riverside Hotel in Garden City.
The itinerary includes training sessions for candidates and activists and updating the party platform. Idaho Democratic Party spokesman Dean Ferguson says there are a lot of platform changes being proposed but most are tweaks to language in existing planks. Ferguson says one significant change that may be made is calling for a specific increase to the state’s minimum wage.
While the convention is mostly about state-level business, Ferguson says there will be some presidential politics as well.
“Part of business will be to elect from among the delegate numbers, 23 people to go back to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July,” he says.
And Ferguson says another presidential election-related issue will loom large.
“There’s a lot of energy among the crowd to change from a caucus system for electing presidents here in Idaho to a primary system,” he says. “And that’s going to have a lot of debate during the convention and you know, that’s pretty important.”
Some Idaho Democrats have been calling for a switch to a presidential primary since last March when some caucus locations saw delays that were several hours long.
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