By Arthur E. Foulkes
TERRE HAUTE — Two Vigo County Democrats will be casting votes as delegates at the Democratic National Convention this August in Denver.
Bionca Gambill, township trustee/assessor for Linton Township, and Terre Haute attorney Bill Smock will be among the 85 Hoosier delegates at the Aug. 25-28 convention.
Gambill is pledged to support Illinois Sen. Barack Obama at the convention. Smock is pledged to cast a vote for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.
“It’s my first time going so I can’t tell you what to expect,” Gambill said. “I’m riding the wave.”
Gambill is one of two delegates from the 8th District pledged to support Obama. Smock is one of four delegates from the district pledged to support Clinton. Clinton won a majority of the votes in each of the 18 counties that make up the 8th Congressional District in the May Indiana primary.
“This has been more interesting than most” presidential nomination contests, Smock said of the Democratic presidential nomination contest. As a political science major in college, he has long taken an interest in presidential politics, he said.
Both Gambill and Smock were selected as delegates to the national convention on Saturday at the Indiana Democratic Party convention in Indianapolis. Gambill, who was not slated by party leaders to be a national convention delegate, had to run her own campaign to secure her election, she said.
“I wasn’t going to take anything for granted and the only way to garnish votes was to campaign and that’s what I did,” Gambill said. To encourage convention delegates to vote for her, Gambill sent out letters and handed out fliers to delegates early Saturday morning, she said. “They voted and I won,” Gambill said.
Gambill, who said she must pay her own hotel and air travel expenses to the convention, has been an Obama supporter since last July when she was handed an Obama bumper sticker at a Fourth of July parade in Bloomington, she said. She was chosen to be a delegate to the state convention by Democratic primary voters in Pierson and Linton townships in southern Vigo County, she said.
Smock was appointed to the state convention by either a local or district party chairman and did not campaign to win a spot as a national delegate, he said. As with Gambill, this will be Smock’s first time to serve as a delegate at a national party convention.
Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.
