Delegate Duffy thrilled as he witnesses history

Last week he was plain old Steve Duffy of Ruidoso. This week he’s a man who turned down an invitation to a private lunch with former President Bill Clinton because he had to be part of a strategy session with Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager to figure out where she’ll find 270 electoral votes.

“We’re actually aiming for over 330 votes,” Duffy said in an email report from Philadelphia, where he’s representing New Mexico along with 42 other state delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

On Thursday he gave up a free Lady Gaga and Lenny Kravitz concert, “so that I can be somewhat rested for tonight’s historic acceptance speech.”

It has been a week both thrilling and exhausting for Duffy, who may be Ruidoso’s first delegate ever to a Democratic presidential convention, with emotional highs and lows that have left him literally speechless from the shouting.

The moment he is sure to remember for the rest of his life was helping to cast New Mexico’s vote in the roll call that nominated the first woman ever to run for president as a major party’s nominee.

“Being a part of that roll call, where we literally cast and signed our votes for the candidates we pledged for,” Duffy said, “then as our delegation literally squeezed together . . . and listened as state by state, we came closer and closer to and then actually MADE American history in that moment was as amazing as it was surreal.”

Equally exciting but far more difficult, Duffy said, were the moments when the New Mexico delegation confronted its own divisions between those committed to Clinton and those who fought for Bernie Sanders.

Duffy said that New Mexico’s 34 elected delegates were fairly evenly split between the two contenders, 18 for Clinton to 16 for Sanders. The remaining nine “super delegates” all backed Clinton.

“I can't get swept only into the pinch-me moments of this convention,” Duffy said. “I must also continue to stand alongside the angry and heartbroken members of our delegation, who fought so hard for a candidate they believed in so much, yet did not win.”

“Standing by them when I cannot condone some of their words and actions and striving to earn some mutual respect and understanding hasn't been easy,” he said. “But it's worth trying, and I am trying.”

But Duffy said those tensions were far outweighed by the feeling he and his fellow delegates shared of total immersion in the national political process and the exposure to new ideas and new people from all over the country.

“This has been an electrifying four days in Philadelphia and a huge learning experience,” he said. “This process actually IS life-changing for participants.”