On the Saturday before Christmas, Democrats Lisa Middleton, Elizabeth Romero and Joy Silver decided it was time to ditch superficial remarks about democracy, get down to business and discuss how to turn Riverside County more blue.

At the Palm Desert Public Library — neutral mid-valley territory between Romero's east valley stomping ground and Silver and Middleton's Palm Springs' base — the three women met to figure out a way to decide which one of them should run for the State Senate seat they'd all begun campaigning and collecting endorsements for.

After Republican Jeff Stone vacated the seat in October to take a position in President Trump's Labor Department, Riverside County Democrats had high hopes that the time was ripe to wrest District 28 from GOP hands in March's special election.

But because of the way things transpired at the library, the party's frontrunners now agree that infighting will likely force a runoff election in May, between the top Democrat vote-getter and Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore.

Under the special election rules, if any candidate receives more than 50% of the vote on March 3, he or she will win outright. Although Senate District 28 has long been a conservative stronghold, Democrats reckoned that their party could see record-high turnout as balloting coincides with the party's presidential primary.

To avoid fragmenting Democratic support and create an opportunity to end the race in March, Middleton, Romero and Silver tried to come up with a set of criteria to determine which of them had the best shot at winning the seat. The meeting ended in a stalemate, and Silver asked for more time to consider the arrangement.

The following Monday, she called Romero and said she intended to run.

Romero and Middleton both said, at the meeting, they had pledged they would accept the results of a mutually agreed-upon process in the interest of the party — and Silver didn't.

Silver, who said she called the meeting, remembered the conversation as more casual in nature, about ideas to unify, rather than a decided-upon set of criteria that could lead candidates to step forward or down.

"It's not like I said, 'I won't step down,'" she said. "I said there were items that were laid out that I thought I'd met the criteria for. ... Many Democratic clubs had already endorsed me by that time and this showed how unified the party was in my candidacy."

With Democrats unable to coalesce support behind a single candidate, despite their early efforts, the party's voter base will be divided among three on the March ballot: Silver, who ran against and lost to Stone in 2018; Romero, who sits on the Riverside County Board of Education; and Anna Nevenic, a perennial candidate who ran in the 2014 and 2018 primary, when she received less than 10% of the vote. Nevenic said she only decided to run after learning Democrats would already be dividing the vote.

The realization that the election would likely be decided in May rather than March convinced Middleton not to run. After it became clear that multiple Democrats would be in the race, she decided to run for reelection to the Palm Springs City Council instead.

"I'm going to continue to say that our best chance was to coalesce behind one strong candidate and unite for the March 3" vote, Middleton said.

The party's failure to coalesce around one candidate has inflamed local Democrats and, political consultants say, impeded both Silver and Romero in their efforts to raise substantial campaign contributions from statewide progressive groups and lobbies.

It's also given rise to personalized vitriol in the grassroots. Romero supporters are publicly accusing Silver of being a “million-dollar loser,” in reference to her $1.1 million in campaign spending in 2018, and are likening her campaign’s tactics to President Donald Trump’s. Silver supporters, on the other hand, are accusing Romero’s supporters of being “bad Democrats” for siphoning off support from the party-backed candidate.

Meanwhile, Melendez, the Republican frontrunner, is expanding her support beyond the parts of southwestern Riverside County she currently represents in the State Assembly. She's collected endorsements from the majority of the Indian Wells City Council and made inroads with Coachella Valley groups, said Joy Miedecke, head of the East Valley Republican Women's Federated club. Another Republican, John Schwab, is also running.

Endorsements: club charter wars and accusations of foul play

Romero, Silver and Middleton spent months vying for support from party leaders both locally and in Sacramento. State Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins’ former caucus director, Jeff Gozzo, who now works as a campaign consultant for the state party, traveled down to the district to interview each of them in early November, but tread lightly in the conversations to ensure it didn't appear the party was trying to clear the field for one candidate.

Later in the month, Middleton, Romero and Silver each appeared in front of a wider audience of party leaders and consultants in Long Beach at the California Democratic Party Convention, each making the case that she was best equipped to raise campaign contributions and flip the seat.

Tensions boiled in early January after Silver won the delegate vote needed to secure endorsements from the California Democratic Party and the Riverside County Democratic Party.

Romero said the 47-18 endorsement reflected the support of only a few members of a "party elite" she didn't consider herself part of, rather than the larger electorate, and attributed Silver's support to the fact that she's been campaigning since 2018, when she ran against Stone and lost by 3 percentage points.

Silver pushed back against Romero, who was elected to the Coachella Valley Unified School District Board in 2006, when she was 23.

"I'm not a career politician," she said. "I'm not sure who that 'party elite' is. It takes a lot of work to be out in the field and bringing people together to move forward."

Riverside County Democratic Party Vice Chair Agi Kessler, who is supporting Silver, said she'd seen mud-slinging from both sides, but was most worried about attacks against how party endorsements work.

"Look, this process works. It's worked for a long time. People seek the party's endorsement. They work for it. We had the pre-endorsement conference in December and it was a clean process," she said. "When Eduardo Garcia is endorsed or Dr. [Raul] Ruiz is endorsed, you don't hear that stuff."

Kessler said the party bylaws were in place to ensure Democrats didn't actively work against the party-backed candidate, which she called "tantamount to shooting ourselves in the foot."

As the chartering organization, the Riverside County Democratic Party can revoke local clubs' charters if they don't follow their bylaws, which don't allow clubs to endorse against the party-backed candidate and, frequently, not even host or broadcast information about other Democrats. Neutral or Romero-sympathetic clubs say they've faced threats of having their charters revoked.

"In this particular race what has happened is a lot of clubs didn't read their own bylaws and got themselves in a situation where they had a lot of angst over what they do and do they endorse," Kessler said. "If the membership comes to the chartering org and makes complaints about bylaws not being followed, they have to be heard, so bylaws can't just be suspended."

Romero said Silver's supporters were diving into obscure, rarely enforced bylaws and using them as weapons against her campaign.

"I've been barred from the opportunity to even talk to clubs — specifically general club membership — because of an over-interpretation of rules and bylaws. These are all tactics to help support one candidate over the other," she said.

She said she believed all candidates should have the opportunity to appear before Democratic clubs and, given the growing number of independent voters in the state, said inviting "No Party Preference" candidates like Assemblyman Chad Mayes should even be up for discussion. "It's really important to have the opportunity to share your platform and experiences as candidates and allow membership to decide," Romero said.

Silver: 'Maybe they're not Democrats'

Silver said she had worked hard to drum up support from across the district and support from 70% of delegates reflected the fruits of her labor.

"If people are unhappy with the Democratic Party, then maybe they're not Democrats. If we're supposed to be united against Trump's Republican Party, if someone thinks the system is unfair, then I would wonder what the real agenda is behind that," she said.

Both Silver and Romero said it was a few supporters, not them personally, who were lobbing the attacks toward the opposing campaign and highlighted their respect for each other.

"I think we have a few unhappy people who have ideas of their own. I certainly know Elizabeth and I have the almost same identical platform points, so we're really working toward the same goal and want to beat Melissa Melendez," Silver said. "Having an ax to grind and to tear down a candidate that has an opportunity to move forward — that's not me."

Romero said she's told supporters to highlight the positive nature of her campaign rather than denigrate her opponent. She said she hopes to vie for support from local clubs, whom she now wishes she called "party-involved" rather than the "party elite."

"I personally don't condone any disparagement of any candidate and think we need to run on qualifications and experience. Come March 4," she said, referring to the day after the election, "it's going to be important for us to get together and work together."

Sam Metz covers politics. Reach him at samuel.metz@desertsun.com or on Twitter @metzsam.