Noticed at the Deschutes Democrats Central Committee meeting on January 13, 2022, for consideration at the February meeting of the Deschutes Democrats Central Committee. Find a complete copy of our current bylaws here.
Regarding Officer & Coordinated Campaign Committee Eligibility
Add a section to Article V, as follows:
Sec 12. Any person eligible to be a Precinct Committee Person shall be eligible to be a Central Committee officer, except for someone who is a declared candidate for, or is an incumbent in, the office of State Senator, State House Representative, or any position elected from the county at large. A declared candidate in a partisan primary election may not serve as a member of the Central Committee’s Coordinated Campaign Committee until after the primary election.
Rationale: There is currently no officer eligibility requirement specified in the bylaws, so by state law it’s the same as eligibility as for PCPs but this should be explicit in the bylaws. Additionally, we need to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest. A Central Committee (county party) officer is in a position of power with influence over the operations of the county party, and may be privy to information regarding the operations of the county party, to affect the outcome of an election with bias favoring their own candidacy. Even when we can trust an officer/candidate to compartmentalize and not be biased, we cannot afford the appearance of bias or that the “Democratic Party Establishment” is affecting the outcome of a primary election. This bylaw is modeled after (nearly verbatim) a parallel bylaw of the Democratic Party of Oregon (Article V, Sec 2, https://dpo.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/DPO-Bylaws-9.12.21.pdf)
Eligibility to serve on the Coordinated Campaign Committee is added for the same reasons. Of course, any candidate may still participate in meetings of the Coordinated Campaign Committee as long as all candidates and their campaigns are also invited so as to avoid an appearance of bias. Once the primary election is over, then for the general election bias is no longer a factor. Although this is not part of the parallel DPO bylaw, unlike the Deschutes Central Committee’s coordinated campaign, the DPO’s coordinated campaign is operated completely independently of the State Central Committee, with zero sharing of information or operational authority.