The electricity flows as Young Democrats of America meet

Party politics and pro football are two of the three great religions in Buffalo, N.Y. The third is electricity, which is to this proud, blue-collar burg what starlets are to Los Angeles: a God-given natural resource. It can light up major cities, turn them into sparkling jewels. It can lend fleeting incandescence to a megawatt career, then surge to dangerous levels, fizzle and -- poof!

Sometimes the three religions get tangled up together, like wires in a giant power grid. Remember O.J. Simpson? When he shattered NFL records as a Buffalo Bills running back in the 1970s, he was nicknamed “The Juice,” and his offensive linemen were known as the Electric Company. Run, O.J., run!

When former Buffalo quarterback and Republican luminary Jack Kemp won a seat in Congress, he generated lots of loyal support among Bills fans, who have longer memories and a heckuva lot more tolerance for failure than, say, the average American voter. Win, Jack, win!

From Niagara Falls to Ralph Wilson Stadium to Capitol Hill, power in Buffalo flows in many directions at once. As it did here last week, when 800 rising young stars of the Democratic political firmament, with an average age of 25, met for five days to talk shop, tout candidates, hold elections, drink beer, eat their way through mounds of Buffalo-style chicken wings, and plot strategy for a party that lately has been short-circuiting all over the place. Not even the worst electrical failure in U.S. history, which miraculously sidestepped the Queen City after knocking out power from Detroit to Manhattan, could keep the show from going on.

The agenda was packed tighter than a Niagara Falls tour boat for the biennial gathering of the Young Democrats of America: live speeches from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, taped speeches from John Edwards and John Kerry, training sessions, cocktail parties, a Minority Caucus discussion on affirmative action. But for some of the ardent young delegates, the first order of business was answering that perpetual bipartisan brainteaser: How old can you be and still be the Future of Your Party, as Young Democrats (and no doubt Young Republicans) are often called?

“The target demographic is 14 through 36,” said Lauren Goode, the YDA’s executive vice president. “That seems to be an age when people are finding their ideas and personalities. We actually had at our San Diego meeting a kid who was 12, whose mother brought him. And up to 36. You can kind of fudge it a little bit.”

It was Wednesday morning, and the Young Dems’ shock troops -- mostly officers like Goode, plus a few other volunteers -- were busily setting up tables and chairs and coordinating schedules at the Buffalo Convention Center, an industrial-strength concrete hangar around the corner from the city’s burly Art Deco City Hall, the architectural equivalent of a tattooed weight lifter.

A native of Peebles, Ohio, a tiny Ohio River farming town, Goode is the archetypal Young Democrat: bright, personable, ambitious, brimming with idealistic energy, well versed in party history and the late 20th century’s political watersheds. She’s a little bit old school and a little bit new school, a touch of Adlai Stevenson and Eleanor Roosevelt, a dash of George McGovern and Bill Clinton.

The trick to recruiting Young Democrats, Goode and several delegates said, is to capture their imaginations while they still have time to pass petitions and knock on doors, before they’re absorbed in parenthood and career fast-tracking. At 24, Goode already sees herself as a middle-aged Young Democrat. “We don’t want to be the future, [but] I think we are now, given the state of the party across the country. I don’t think we can wait to mature.”

A youthful vibe

As Goode chatted with a reporter, several more Young or Not-So-Young Democrats bustled by en route to various tasks. One was Gary Collins, 35, the convention’s credentials chairman and a senior fiscal analyst for the Oklahoma state Legislature. Collins was elected mayor of his hometown seven years ago, at an age when many humans are more worried about paying off student loans and finding a Saturday night date.

The morning had the feel of an Andy Hardy movie, lots of lanky kids from the Midwest and Northeast in jeans and flip-flops setting out fliers, lapel pins and buttons (“When Clinton Lied, Nobody Died!”). Some conventioneers wore T-shirts inscribed with the event’s official logo, a silhouetted donkey inside a big red buffalo head, suggesting a kind of Push-Me-Pull-You creature.

In essence, some delegates said, that’s the current Democratic Party, unsure whether to go forward or back. Over and over during the convention, delegates told one another: The Republicans are stealing all our good ideas! They’ve body-snatched Generation X and now they’re going after Gen-Y as well.

“It’s all a money game,” said Jay Parmley, 35, a former YDA president and now chairman of the Oklahoma Democratic Party. Older Republicans are bankrolling conservative student publications at universities, he said. They’re hiring full-time staffers to travel to campuses, scouting for raw talent. “The Republicans have taken this on as a serious mission,” Parmley said. The Democrats, he thinks, need to invest more in young blood and grooming candidates who are still hungry. “Waiting till you’re older will only get you beat,” he said.

One up-and-comer, Dan Cohen, 32, president of the New York State Young Democrats, said he didn’t always know that he was a political animal. “It’s still not easy telling people,” he added. “Everybody thinks you’re a crook or a pathological liar.”

An Upper West Side native who now works for the New York City Economic Development Corp., Cohen plans to run for New York’s City Council soon and hopes to be governor someday. But he’s candid about the toll that politics has taken on his personal life. “I’m having the first normal relationship I’ve had in four years,” he said. “All my female friends are married and have kids. This is not a light hobby. It sort of dominates and permeates your life.”

Unless, like Ed Espinoza and Christy Agner, you can find a way to make the political into the personal and vice versa. Espinoza, of Long Beach, earned a political science degree at UCLA, worked on campaigns for Bill Clinton and Gray Davis and is the only Democrat in his family. “It’s always fun at barbecues,” he said.

Agner, 32, was raised in what she describes as “a progressive church family” in Salisbury, N.C. (Liddy Dole’s hometown). She said she came of age politically “when the Iran-Contra affair busted out.”

Like a number of Young Democrats, she and Espinoza met at political events and started dating. “It’s like ‘Melrose Place’ but without all that drama,” Agner said, then corrected herself. “Some drama.”

Agner, director of the Women’s Vote Center for the Democratic National Committee, thinks health care “is definitely an issue” for young college graduates, 30% of whom couldn’t find jobs last year, she said.

Espinoza believes his peers also care about Internet privacy and the Patriot Act. “And downloadable music. Huge issue,” he said. But does “Free the MP3 files!” have the same ring as “Hell no, we won’t go”?

Espinoza excused himself to take a cell phone call. His ringer is set to the band Weezer’s “Keep Fishin’.” When Agner calls, she gets No Doubt’s “Just a Girl.”

The good news for young Democrats, according to Agner, is that the 18-to-29 demographic was one of two groups that went for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election. The bad news is that only 32% of eligible voters in that age bracket actually voted in 2000, down from 43% in 1992.

A poor candidate showing

Aspiring occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. might pause before taking a trip to Buffalo. One president, William McKinley, was shot there while giving a speech. Native son Millard Fillmore, America’s 13th president, is generally regarded as perhaps the most hapless chief executive in U.S. history.

Whatever their reasons, most of the Democratic presidential candidates bypassed the convention, sending video greetings and/or familial proxies. That didn’t sit well with delegates who’d spent their own money and traveled thousands of miles to attend. Dean seemed to be a favorite already with many delegates, and he gained extra points for agreeing to speak to the convention on Saturday.

“They definitely all should’ve been here. It doesn’t look good,” said delegate Sheila Bunn, taking a break from a training session on campaign financing.

The other Democratic politician who got props for at least showing up was the TV talk show host better known for sowing dissent than creating consensus. Jerry Springer, the former Cincinnati mayor who’d been toying until recently with making a run for the U.S. Senate, was listed as a “special guest” scheduled to address the convention’s opening general session, which was aired live on C-SPAN.

As delegates filed back into the convention center from the muggy Buffalo streets, some clutching takeout sandwiches from the New Yawk Deli across the street, others took their seats in the banquet room, where a battery of cameras scanned red, white and blue placards bearing the names of all 50 states, Puerto Rico and “YDA Abroad.” Cohen, who’d been on his feet most of the day after hosting a New York state delegation meeting, was tackling some takeout Buffalo wings. It was 5 p.m. Breakfast or lunch, he was asked? “Yes,” he replied.

Springer was somewhere in the wings, but the audience would have to wait. First, YDA president Scott Butler told the delegates that “a Democratic president is going to return this country to the people, not to the wealthiest 1%, but to all Americans.” Then Alabama Rep. Artur Davis told them that if the Democratic Party narrows its progressive vision, “we won’t deserve to be in power.” “Our party is the only party in this country that speaks to those 25-year-olds who have been forgotten,” Davis said in solemn cadences.

Finally, after a taped speech by Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina played out on two giant video screens, Springer was introduced and came bounding into the room to wild applause and chants of “Jer-ry! Jer-ry!”

Springer’s speech was a hit. He talked about his German family, which fled to America while other relatives perished in the Holocaust. He quoted Bob Dylan. He sounded almost apologetic about “the ridiculously privileged life I live today.” The government shouldn’t be helping rich people like him, he said, and the Democrats shouldn’t be acting like Republicans because “you’ll never play golf as good as they can.” Maybe it wasn’t SDS’ Port Huron Statement or “I have a dream.”

But as the convention floor emptied and the delegates drifted out to hit the restaurants and bars along Chippewa Street, one of their number hung back, taking in the scene. Danielle Valentino, 24, from Del Mar, near La Jolla, said she grew up in “a very apolitical family.” Today she works as a field representative for Rep. Loretta Sanchez of Orange County and is contemplating a life in politics, saying, “9/11 was the formative point.”

What had she made of the last speaker? “I was so skeptical of him, I thought I was going to hear him and laugh,” she said, laughing anyway. “Oh, my God, I love Jerry Springer!”

There was a kind of electricity in her voice. Just what the Democrats will need a few months from now, when the muggy weather has ended and those long, blizzardy nights begin in New Hampshire.