The ongoing dispute between Alabama Democratic Party leaders and the Democratic National Committee could place the state’s March 3 Democratic presidential primary in jeopardy, according to some party leaders.

Time is ticking toward a key deadline, they say, and too many unknowns exist to say for sure whether the primary can take place.

By 5 p.m. on Nov. 8, all candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination must have filed a statement of candidacy with the state party chair. But, at present, the DNC doesn’t recognize either a state party chair or vice chair in Alabama, and there are no plans to schedule a new election of those officers.

Among the issues fueling the DNC’s displeasure is the lack of an approved delegate selection plan in Alabama for the coming presidential contest. The Alabama Democratic Party is the only state party that hasn’t submitted a plan to the DNC for consideration.

“If we don’t have an approved plan, we cannot go to the convention,” said Jefferson County Democratic Party chairman Richard Mauk. “The worst-case scenario is that we don’t have a primary and yes, that’s totally unprecedented.”

The DNC’s concerns were laid out in a Sept. 9 letter to Mauk from DNC chairman Tom Perez. Perez indicated that the DNC won’t OK a delegate selection plan in Alabama until there’s new leadership at the top of the state party.

Nonetheless, Mauk said, “I hope that our chair will call the meeting of the state Democratic Party executive committee and approve a delegate selection plan that is acceptable to the DNC. That is my hope.”

‘Sky is falling’

Alabama Democratic Party Chairwoman answers questions after she was reelected leader of the state party. (Mike Cason/mcason@al.com)

The party chair in question is Nancy Worley, who lost her credentials with the DNC last month as the result of a long-running controversy about the state party not approving bylaws or holding a new election for its top offices.

Worley, in an interview Friday with AL.com, said she isn’t going anywhere. She said that her losing credentials with the DNC “doesn’t affect, whatsoever, the whole delegate selection plan.”

“We’ve got a lot of drama queens in Alabama who like to make a monster out of a mouse,” said Worley. “The whole delegate selection process is not a monster. It’s going on as it was set to go.”

Worley said that eight of the Democratic presidential hopefuls are submitting outreach information to the state Democratic Party headquarters. She said the delegate selection process will continue on like it has in years past, and she doesn’t anticipate any disruption with the state primary.

“They are just alarmists,” Worley said of party members fretting about the primary being canceled. “They just say, ‘The sky is falling.’ It hasn’t fallen yet and I don’t foresee if falling on the primary tomorrow.”

Worley said she believes the disagreements pitting the state party’s leadership against the DNC boil down to the sensitive nature of rewriting state party bylaws to provide for more diverse representation on the State Democratic Executive Committee (SDEC). The DNC wants Alabama’s Democratic Party to develop an affirmative action plan to ensure SDEC representation by marginalized groups aside from African-Americans: Hispanics, Asians, youth, LGBTQ individuals and people with disabilities.

Worley called the dispute “a black-white issue” that isn’t going to be resolved by calling a special meeting. “I have no reason to believe that putting 200 to 250 people in a room is going to bring us to a solution,” she said. “I haven’t seen it happen in my lifetime in any kind of organizational meeting. I don’t think this would be a first.”

Jim Spearman, who serves on the Democratic State Executive Committee and served as the party’s executive director from 2005-2011, said the affirmative action issues raised by the DNC amount to a “goal” that the state party will try to reach. And he said the DNC will “bend over backward” to help a state party try to reach those goals by providing exit polling data and other demographic figures that goes into an affirmative action plan.

“The goals are goals and it’s an outreach,” said Spearman. “Why they don’t agree to it, I don’t understand.”

Sanctions

Spearman, like Mauk, said there is legitimate concern that Alabama Democrats run a risk of having no presence at the party’s July national convention. Sixty Alabama delegates, including four alternates, are supposed to attend the Milwaukee convention.

“We’re flirting with a deadline,” said Spearman, a Lamar County resident who’s held numerous key roles with the party since 1988. “The party is inactive, it seems. I’m on the state Democratic executive committee and we’re not having any communications about this.”

Even if the party is able to conduct a primary despite its feuding with the DNC, it runs the risk of sanctions – and those could have national implications.

Alabama is among the 14 Super Tuesday states, and has been anticipating multiple campaign visits by Democratic presidential hopefuls.

The DNC has wide latitude to issue sanctions against the state parties. In early 2008, during the tight Democratic presidential battle, the DNC stripped the Florida and Michigan state parties of all their delegates – 210 in Florida, and 156 in Michigan – and barred those delegates from attending the national convention.

The two state parties had upset the DNC by holding their primaries earlier than the national party allowed. Hillary Clinton won both of those January 2008 primaries.

The Florida and Michigan delegates were eventually restored to their positions ahead of the convention, but only after Barack Obama was declared the presumptive nominee.

Susan MacManus, a distinguished professor emerita at the University of South Florida, said she believes that history might have taken a different course had the DNC withheld its Florida sanction.

Her reasoning: According to conventional wisdom, a Clinton victory in Florida was supposed to be “the end of the road for Obama,” MacManus said.

But the Florida party held its primary a week earlier that the DNC preferred. The DNC reacted with sanctions, and the Florida delegates got dropped from ongoing delegate counts featured daily in TV news and commentaries.

“Had (Florida) gone one week later, her delegates would’ve counted in the mix and she would’ve been well under way toward getting the nomination,” said MacManus. “But throughout the election calendar, they didn’t count Florida.”

Worries for Biden

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign stop, Friday, Sept. 6, 2019, in Laconia, N.H. (AP Photo/Mary Schwalm)AP

Political observers believe that former Vice President Joe Biden could potentially be harmed the most if Alabama’s Democratic primary were called off. Biden is scheduled to make a campaign stop today in Birmingham.

“I would think the Biden people would not want the Alabama primary canceled,” said Kyle Kondick, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “That is a state they are probably targeting that would vote strongly for them given how well Biden is doing with the African American voters right now.”

Wayne Flynt, a political historian and professor emeritus at Auburn University, said Biden “would be the most likely casualty” if the status quo exists into March.

Flynt said that Biden will be “vulnerable” in California, which is also hosting its primary on Super Tuesday. California is sending 495 delegates and 35 alternates to the convention.

“If he picks up no delegates that day in Alabama, the spinmeisters on MSNBC, CNN, the networks, Fox News, will try to write his obituary,” Flynt said.

He added, “People in the Democratic Party who have been around for a long a time might want to intervene in this case and make sure that primary isn’t canceled.”

Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and an expert in Southern politics, said Biden is poised to perform the best during the Democratic contests in the Deep South where black voters dominate the polls. “He needs states like Alabama to stay in the game, rather than to be sidelined for rules violations,” said Jillson.

U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, D-Birmingham and the state’s highest-ranking elected Democrat, said in a statement that he believes the state party will soon see progress in electing new leadership.

“The Alabama Democratic Party needs internal reform and new leadership,” the Jones campaign said in a statement to AL.com. “It all gets back to transparency and inclusion. I appreciate Chairman Perez’s letter clarifying the challenges currently facing the state Party and the DNC’s offer to assist in achieving compliance with bylaws and conducting new leadership elections. I believe that we will see progress even in the next few days in achieving these things that ADP leadership has been resisting since February.”

Some of the concerned Democrats are confident that the problems will eventually be worked out, and worst-case scenarios will be avoided.

“Members of the (State Democratic Executive Committee) are quite aware of the situation and are frustrated,” said Ralph Young, a Homewood resident who has filed challenges against the party’s leadership. “There are talks about what we can do next. But I don’t think the rank and file Democrats are aware of the situation we are in. Hopefully, we can correct this before it becomes an issue.”