Democrats’ Convention Chief Chosen

The Democratic National Committee has tapped Lydia Camarillo, leader of the Southwest Voter Registration Project in Texas, to head the party’s 2000 national convention, which will be held in Los Angeles in August.

Party leaders are expected to announce the appointment of Camarillo, who heads the nation’s largest voter registration project, and introduce other members of the convention management team in Los Angeles today, sources said.

The appointment ends a long and frustrating search by Democratic leaders to find the right person to serve in the high-profile job and become a symbol for the party.

Los Angeles was selected as the convention site in part because the city provides a perfect backdrop for the party’s message that it is the party of diversity, with what is expected to be a highly focused appeal for Latino votes.

Those close to the selection process said aides to Vice President Al Gore, who is playing an influential role in organizing the convention, wanted a Latina. Several other candidates were approached but reportedly turned the job down before Camarillo accepted.

Camarillo, although she has worked from her base in San Antonio for the last eight years, has strong ties to Los Angeles and California. She previously worked for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and was a program director for the Latino Issues Forum.

Party leaders say they like Camarillo as much for her hard-nosed political organizing skills as as for what they believe will be her ability to handle the media spotlight that inevitably comes with the job.

“She has been very important in registering more voters for our party,” said a party official. “We like her focus on grass-roots organizing and her efforts to reach out to new voters. That is an important message we are sending out.”

The convention will be held Aug. 14-17 at the new Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles and will bring together 4,366 delegates and 610 alternates.

Sources said other convention managers who will be named today will have strong ties to Gore, who polls indicate is the front-running Democrat for the presidential nomination.

Backing up Camarillo in the No. 2 job will be Donald Foley, manager of the Democrats’ 1996 convention and a communications consultant for the last Clinton-Gore campaign.

The convention chief of staff will be Rod O’Connor, currently a senior official with the Democratic National Committee and a former senior aide to Gore and staffer on Gore’s vice presidential campaign in 1996, sources said.

Also expected to be named to the convention’s management team is Jeff Modisett, the attorney general of Indiana, who has been active in litigation against tobacco companies and sweepstakes promoters. Modisett worked for nine years in the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

Filling out the convention management team will be Katreice Banks, who has held a number of political jobs in the southern states and was with the Gore 2000 campaign; Mona Pasquil, who works for the White House and previously worked for Kathleen Brown, the former California treasurer; and Yolanda Carraway, a longtime Democratic staffer who has worked for a number of different candidates and officeholders.

The announcements will be made today by Democratic National Committee officials, along with Eli Broad, co-chairman of the committee of local Democrats who brought the convention here.

In another development, the local convention committee announced that Monica Lozano, associate publisher of La Opinion, Los Angeles’ Spanish-language daily newspaper, will be co-chairwoman of the host committee. Lozano earlier this year was appointed to the State Board of Education by Gov. Gray Davis.