National Democrats will be guided by Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, a long-time Barack Obama supporter, when they craft their platform at the convention in Denver, the Democratic National Committee announced today. The Copper State chief will head up the party's Platform Drafting Committee in advance of the full committee hammering out a draft to be voted on by the convention.

Napolitano will be joined by prominent Democrats from around the country, including Reps. Tammy Baldwin, Rosa DeLauro, Patrick Murphy and Linda Sanchez, as well as Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, Maryland Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown and Obama advisers Susan Rice and Heather Higginbottom. The committee includes prominent Clinton backers, like Baldwin and Granholm, as well as Obama backers.

The drafting committee is scheduled to meet August 1 in Cleveland, Ohio, to hear from the public, but that's not the only chance voters will have to give input. The party will also hold platform meetings in local communities which will produce summaries to be reviewed by the full, elected committee, the DNC announced today.

"From the beginning, we said we were going bring down the traditional walls of the Democratic Convention and make this event more accessible and include as many people as possible," DNC chief Howard Dean said in a statement. "This process will empower Americans in all 50 states to make their voices heard as they help write the document that embodies our Party's values and vision for the future."

That Obama's campaign would open the process, at least nominally, to non-party elites is nothing new. Previous nominees have sent their platform committees on junkets around the country to take testimony in a number of different cities. Still, the breadth of Obama's reach is once again in play, as the Illinois Senator makes it known that a certain, likely very high, number of people are interested in crafting the ideological foundation of his campaign.

After the platform is drafted in Cleveland, the full committee will meet in Pittsburgh the following week to hammer out the final version to be voted on by delegates to the convention. Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts, and former New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid will co-chair the full committee, along with former Discovery Communications president and CEO Judith McHale.

In charge of the entire process will be Karen Kornbluh, who serves as Obama's policy director in his Senate office. Kornbluh, the Principle Author of the Platform, will be joined by National Platform Director Michael Yaki, a one-time top aide to Nancy Pelosi and a commissioner on the U.S. Comission on Civil Rights.

It is unusual for either party to face serious fights over what normally turns out to be a ratification of the nominee's wishes, though conservatives have hinted that they might cause a ruckus at the Republican Convention in St. Paul, especially over issues like climate change and immigration.