Editor’s note: Aspen Daily News Reporter Andrew Travers and Photo Editor Zach Ornitz will be in Denver all week providing localized coverage of the Democratic National Convention. Also check out the “Live Coverage From DNC” link in the upper-left column of our Web page — www.aspendailynews.com — for other notes, quotes and photos rounded up at the convention.


DENVER — When Sen. Hillary Clinton freed her pledged delegates for the Democratic presidential nomination over the weekend, and officially ended her campaign, it meant they would be free to vote for the party’s presumptive nominee, Sen. Barack Obama.

But like a lot of those delegates and fervent supporters, Bryan Gonzales, of Snowmass Village, will proudly cast his first vote for Hillary Clinton.

“It’s a symbolic vote,” Gonzales said Monday night on the floor of the Democratic National Convention at Denver’s Pepsi Center. “But I really look forward to casting that vote. That’s all we want.”

Some Democrats in Denver this week are worried that a roll call vote reflecting the remnant fissures of this spring’s marathon Clinton-Obama primary race will weaken the Obama ticket. This weeklong convention is painstakingly choreographed to portray a picture-perfect positive image of the party’s standard bearer, and some Obama supporters are eager to paint the picture of a unified party.

Clinton has said she will not tell her supporters how to vote. And the buzz at the convention is that the Clinton and Obama teams will likely broker a deal before the roll call Wednesday night.

Delegate Gonzales, who sells real estate and is executive director of the Roaring Fork Gay and Lesbian Community Fund, said he would happily vote for Obama ... after he’s voted for Hillary Clinton.

“This is important, really important, to our constituents who worked so hard and believe in Hillary,” he said.

After the initial roll call vote tomorrow, he said, he will support Barack Obama.

“I am certain if the shoe were on the other foot, and she was accepting the nomination this week, [Obama’s] supporters would do the exact same thing,” Gonzales said. “Once we have our vote on the first ballot, if she says she wants to pledge us to Obama, I will be the first to hold up a Barack Obama sign. In fact, it will be a relief for me.”

Other Hillary stalwarts, Gonzales indicated, are not as happy to fall in line. “There are still calls and e-mails,” he said. “They’re not happy.”

Monday night Gonzales signaled he was willing to reconcile and get behind Obama, as he did wave a Barack Obama sign that read “Change We Can Believe In” while Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi delivered applause lines to the Dem throng.

Pelosi was actually within sneezing distance.

Of the 4,440 delegates on the floor Monday night, very few of them had better seats than Gonzales and Aspenite Blanca O’Leary, who is co-chair of the Pitkin County Democratic Party. The pair sat side by side in the front row.

Because Colorado is hosting the convention — and, presumably because Colorado has been dubbed a swing state — its delegates are seated closest to this week’s speakers, at center-stage right, directly in front of representatives from fellow battleground states Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Delegations from less vital electorates get less valuable real estate on the convention floor. (Puerto Rico and Oregon, for instance, are seated in the rear — with a partial view of the stage — and next to a 12-person band that introduces speakers with saxaphone-keyboard fugues and provides upbeat musical interludes that are heavy on Motown and disco standards like Cheryl Lynn’s “Got To Be Real.”)

The homemade signs being waved among the Centennial State delegation were “Barack the Rockies” and “High Time for Obama.”

Colorado and its delegates garnered a lot of attention Monday night. Before Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean addressed the crowd yesterday afternoon, a video called “Welcome to the West” screened on the Pepsi Center’s three massive television screens.

In fact, the video opened with Gov. Bill Ritter, in a cowboy hat and fishing waders, standing in a babbling Colorado brook with a Rocky Mountain vista behind him.

It is assumed that Gov. Ritter will wear a suit and tie when he addresses the convention Thursday night before Barack Obama’s acceptance speech.

andrew@aspendailynews.com