Saturday, March 01, 2008

SD 42 convention in Eden Prairie

An interesting day to say the least. Grandpa Tom and I headed down and met up with some of our other colleagues to check out the SD 42 convention, with close attention paid to the CD 3 race.


Bonoff clearly won the sign war. Madia won the day.

Ashwin ended up with at least 8 delegates, Bonoff 6 with 3 "uncommitted". Of those "uncommitted, 1 is stronly aligned with Ashwin Madia, 1 with Terri Bonoff, and the last with Jim Hovland. From what I was able to gather near the floor, the potential Hovland delegate could be leaning Madia as well.

A 10-7 win in Eden Prairie for Madia would be huge. An 8-6 win is big enough!

I'll be posting You Tube video's of both Bonoff and Madia addressing the delegates later.

It was interesting watching the vast amount of walking sub caucuses. About 48 were created with only a select few being viable after the first walk.
Senator Klobuchar came to address the crowd and received a very warm welcome. Al Franken spoke as well in the most animated I have seen him yet. Ciresi and Jack Nelson Pallmeyer were represented by surrogates.
Anyone know this guy? He was a walking subcaucus supporter of net neutrality. We'll let Joe tell you where he ended up.

All told, it was a pretty interesting day. At one point, nearly 540 delegates were seated on the floor. Hats off to the SD 42 folks for running a great convention.

Congrats to Ashwin Madia and his campaign machine for their successful day!

You Tubes are coming...

5 comments:

Charley Underwood said...

Hey, Blue Man, I was at SD 62 today as well, volunteering for Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer. Sorry I missed you.

I saw something today that I had never seen before. The Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer subcaucus itself used a walking subcaucus system to select the delegate and alternate to the state convention: each proposed candidate stood and those who favored that candidate went over to stand behind their favorite candidate. That produced a front-runner and a clear second place, but the delegates weren't happy with that and demanded a run-off. The top four vote-getters (or biggest walking sub-subcaucuses) did another line and they did another walking subcaucus to vote again.

After there was a very, very clear result, one of the convention delegates asked if absolutely everyone was pleased with the results. All were.

So it was a walking subcaucus instant runoff vote with consensus. I have never seen such a thing before, but it certainly was slick.

Various other campaign volunteers and convention officials were totally mystified and couldn't figure out how it worked at first. But it certainly produced results quickly, with no doubt or animosity or even disagreement. I learned something from it.

Charley Underwood said...

I meant to say SD 42. Sorry, I seem to be tired and the hand is quicker than the brain.

Joe Bodell said...

Yeah, about that Net Neutrality caucus....with a viability number of 32 (!) on the first pass, it didn't last too long...

Mike said...

Hey Blue Man,

I was a delegate to the SD42 convention. About two weeks ago, I sent an email to the three CD3 campaigns asking them two questions, how they will balance the federal budget and how they're the most electable candidate.

I was able to trade a few emails the day after I sent the email and a 10-minute phone conversation with Ashwin Madia a few days later (my bad due to my schedule). I never received a reply from Bonoff's campaign and when Hovland's campaign called, I asked the same questions to the campaign worker, who basically told me he would try to find more information on it and someone would contact me (no one ever did). Since I have an iPhone, I was able to show two other delegates to the SD42 convention why I supported Ashwin and they sub-caucused with me for Madia.

While there were 540 or so delegates from my SD alone, it did bother me that I never received a thoughtful reply from the other candidates or their campaigns. Maybe things have changed and constituent response is not what it used to be in the email age, but a hard working Marine picked up potentially 3 SD delegates due to replying to an email and a short phone conversation.

Mike said...

I should add... when Hovland's campaign called, it was a generic cold call, "how are you doing and let me tell you why I support Jim Hovland"-type of call, not a reply to my email.