Source: Hunt/Getty embed

LifeStory

So who created the Superdelegate? It wasn't Jor-El and Lara

Meet former Governor of North Carolina, Jim Hunt

By Rob Waldman

More powerful than your registered primary voter...

Able to switch candidates in a single bound...

Look!  At the Democratic National Convention...

It's President Obama...



It's Al Gore...




It's Debbie Wasserman Schulz...



It's all the Superdelegates!

List of Democratic Party superdelegates, 2016 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


And who, disguised as a mild-mannered Governor of North Carolina, was instrumental in creating Superdelegates?

It was Governor Jim Hunt, the longest serving governor of his state.      



In 1981, Hunt chaired the Democratic Party's Hunt Commission which was formed to write the delegate selection rules for the 1984 nomination season.  After a bitter and contentious battle between Jimmy Carter and Senator Ted Kennedy at the 1980 Democratic Convention, party members knew something had to be done.

As the New York Times reported in 1981:

Governor Hunt noted that the number of Senate and House members attending Senate and House members attending national Democratic conventions was steadily falling.  

He suggested that if members of Congress were automatically made convention delegates, they would become more active party members, would help the party's Presidential candidate and would vote the party line more often on Capitol Hill.


 

DEMOCRATS ASSESS NOMINATING RULES




In a speech that year at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Hunt said:

An equally important step would be to permit a substantial number of party leader and elected official delegates to be selected without requiring a prior declaration of preference.  We would then return a measure of decision making power and discretion to the organized party and increase the incentive it has to offer elected officials for serious involvement.

Sure enough, the most significant result of the Hunt Commission was the establishment of the Superdelegate.  The eligibility and the number of superdelegates has been modified over the years, but it all started with Jim Hunt, who by the way, is not a superdelegate to the 2016 Democratic Convention.

These days, Hunt spends most of his time engaging in genuine bull.  He and his wife live on a cattle farm in Eastern North Carolina where they raise prize Simmental beef cattle.



Governor Jim Hunt
Celebration
  • date of birth

    May 16, 1937

  • place of residence

    North Carolina

  • a celebration of

    Creation of the Superdelegate.

Governor Jim Hunt
Celebration
  • date of birth

    May 16, 1937

  • place of residence

    North Carolina

  • a celebration of

    Creation of the Superdelegate.