NEWBERRY COUNTY — Rep.Walt McLeod is a statewide At Large Delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention, and will be attending the sessions of the convention in Philadelphia, starting July 25 and closing July 28.
McLeod, who was elected as a national convention delegate at the State Democratic Convention in April, is a pledged delegate supporting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“The 2016 Democratic National Convention promises to be another historic and thrilling event for delegates voting to nominate candidates for president and vice president, because as the events unfold, it is inescapable that history is being made right before their eyes,” McLeod said.
The South Carolina delegation, chaired by State Democratic Chairman Jaime Harrison, has 59 votes at the convention, of which 53 are pledged delegates based on the results of South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary conducted in February.
The presidential primary determined that 39 delegates would be pledged to vote for Clinton, and 14 delegates would be pledged to vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders. South Carolina also has six super delegates, all of which are unpledged.
“I served as a delegate to the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco at which former Vice President Walter Mondale was nominated for president and Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro was nominated for vice president,” McLeod said. “Thereafter, in the November general election, the Democratic nominees were defeated by a huge margin by President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush.”
McLeod was one of the founding board members of the Southeastern Institute For Women In Politics, a non-partisan group whose goal was to recruit and elect more women leaders to public office, particularly, in South Carolina.
Of the 46 members of the State Senate, only two are women: Sen. Katrina Shealy of Lexington and Sen. Margie Bright Matthews of Walterboro.
Women senators account for 4 percent of the state senators. Of the 124 members of the State House of Representatives, only 22 members are women. This is almost 18 percent of the state representatives.
Of the state government’s nine constitutional officers, only one is a woman. This amounts to 11 percent of the state’s constitutional officers. When the South Eastern Institute For Women In Politics developed into a partisan organization, McLeod withdrew from participation in the organization.
In the event that Hillary Clinton receives the Democratic nomination for president, she will be the first woman leader in our nation’s history to receive a major party’s nomination for president.
Reaching back in history to 1924, at the Democratic National Convention that year in New York, a South Carolinian was the first woman to be placed in nomination for president or for vice president at a major party’s national convention.
Although she did not receive the Democratic nomination for vice president, Lena Springs, the wife of Springs Mills owner LeRoy Springs, has the distinction of being the first woman whose name was placed in nomination for vice president or president at a major party’s national convention.