Nominating Speech by Tony Campisi

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens. That is what is written in Ecclesiastes and embodied in the popular song by the folk musicians Peter Paul and Mary.

A time to be born and a time to die.

A time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant.

A time to tear down, and a time to build.

My fellow Delaware County Democrats - this is our time. And it is a time to plant, and it is a time to build. - to build on the electoral successes of 2000, 2002 and 2004. A time to build on the successful strategies put in place by the leadership of this party. A time to build up through unity, to plant the seed and nurture it - not to uproot the plant!

The time is over when Democrats can pay short shrift to county offices and when we stop doing so the voters will know we are a serious party.

The time is over when Democrats can turn away from serious races for county council because the prevailing wisdom says that we cannot win and therefore we shall not fight.

The voters in Delaware County will always respond to Democratic candidates when we have the right message - which we do - and when that message is delivered by candidates who are qualified, motivated, intelligent and capable of having a serious dialogue with voters.

My fellow Democrats - it is my honor to nominate two such individuals for the office of County Council: John Innelli of Rose Valley and Nancy Baulis of Springfield. I nominate them as a ticket because they are running as a ticket and the county executive committee and leaders council overwhelmingly recommends their endorsement as a ticket.

To state that John and Nancy are well known to everyone in this room is an understatement. In fact their collective years of service to the Democratic Party span decades. You will find no other candidates with their qualifications, their experience and their desire not only to campaign actively for this job, but to win.

To review the extensive resumes and qualifications of these two candidates would fill the entire convention time period, so I will simply highlight some of their work.

In addition to his fundraising and work on behalf of candidates at all levels, John Innelli has served as a member of the Democratic State Committee since 1994. He ran for Congress in the 7^th Congressional District and for Register of Wills. He is an attorney who fights the type of securities and corporate fraud embodied by Enron.

Nancy Baulis is a Philadelphia public school teacher who on a daily basis shapes the minds of tomorrow. Also a member of the Democratic State Committee, Nancy has been an active officer in the Delaware County Democratic Party for thirty years. Her love of this party and her determination on its behalf earned her the party's Nathan Pechin Award in 2003.

Both of these good, hardworking people have been there for this party and its candidates for longer then most of us can remember. Its our turn to be there for them.

Oscar Wilde once asked "What's worse then finding out people are talking about you? Finding out they're not."

My friends, people are talking. They're talking about us. They're talking about how Democrats keep improving in Delaware County. They're talking about how organized we are. They're talking about our performance and our ability to increase our vote in 2004 when the Democratic vote was going down in nearly every other county in the nation! They're talking about us in Harrisburg, in Washington and in the Republican Party. United States Senator Rick Santorum, - who we'll deal with shortly - who ran the Bush-Cheney campaign in Pennsylvania last year said of our effort here in Delaware County - ''We just got crushed in Delaware County. We did worse there than four years ago. We didn't think that was possible."

But people can stop talking just as easily if we don’t continue to make the right decisions as a party.

There are a lot of people who don't think its possible to win as a Democrat in Delaware County. They're wrong.

There are some people who don't think the leadership of this party knows what its doing. They're wrong.

There are two people who believe in the Democratic Party's ability to mobilize voters for a county council race and who will re-activate the 5000 Kerry Edwards volunteers to their cause and who are overwhelmingly recommended for endorsement by the county party executive committee and the leaders council.

These two individuals have also made a very important pledge that sets them apart from any other candidate for county council who may ask for your endorsement tonight. John Innelli and Nancy Baulis have asked for the endorsement of the leadership of this party. They value that endorsement and they take pride in that endorsement knowing that it brings strength to their campaign.

John and Nancy have publicly stated that if this convention chooses not to endorse them they will withdraw from this race and support the candidates endorsed by this party rather than halting the momentum and unity of this party by creating a costly and damaging primary contest.

There's a word for that type of conviction. Its called honor. There's too little of it left in politics these days and when you see it, you grab hold of it, you reward it, and you work for it.

There are right and wrong reasons why people decide to run for office. In my opinion John and Nancy are doing this for all the right reasons - the most important of which is to bring integrity and seriousness to a county government that all but ignores the needs of the people it supposedly represents.

Our new national chairman, Howard Dean, in his acceptance speech to the winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee in Washington on Saturday said this: "If we want to win nationally, we have to win locally. Election by election… State by state… Precinct by precinct… Door by door… Vote by vote…We're going to take this country back for the people who built it."

Let us start here, in Delaware County, by sending John Innelli and Nancy Baulis to the Delaware County Courthouse. I proudly place their names in nomination and urge that this party accept the recommendations of the party executive committee and the leaders council and endorse John Innelli and Nancy Baulis for County Council.