SD50 Convention
Submitted by lams712 on March 8, 2008 - 6:28pm.
-- [The Big E: promoted] --
Senate District 50 in the north metro (all of New Brighton, Arden Hills, Columbia Heights, Hilltop, about half of Fridley and portions of St. Anthony and Shoreview) is equally divided between Congressional District 4 (represented by Betty McCollum) and Congressional District 5 (represented by Keith Ellison). The SD50 DFL Convention was held at Columbia Heights High School and it turned out to be very good news for the Al Franken campaign.
I will cut to the chase regarding the distribution of delegates to the state convention. SD50 is to send 18 delegates to Rochester this June, 9 from CD4 and 9 from CD5. The convention was split between CD4 and CD5, with CD5 being sent into another auditorium downstairs. I participated in the CD4 portion so I can't say exactly what went on downstairs but in the CD4 part after all of the subcaucusing and voting, the 9 delegates were distributed as follows:
Al Franken-6 delegates
Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer-1 delegate
Mike Ciresi-1 delegate
undecided-1 delegate
I personally have the honor of being the one delegate pledged to Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer (thanks to those in the subcaucus who voted for me!!!).
I was told from someone at the CD5 protion that their 9 delegates were basically distributed the same way (Franken 6, Ciresi 0, Pallmeyer 1, undecided 2). (NOTE: Thanks to Aaron who was at the CD5 portion for the correct info, see comment below)
I have to say that I am mightily impressed with the grassroots effort of the Franken campaign. In SD50 they were really well organized and they were able to get a great many well respected progressive people in the district to go with them, people who under "normal" circumstances would have supported Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer.
It should also be noted that both the Ciresi and Pallmeyer campaigns had proxies who spoke for their candidates. Al Franken was there himself and gave a great, rousing speech that had even a Pallmeyer supporter like me cheering, but certainly not enough to make me change my mind.
On to Rochester in June!!!!!!!
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CD5 section results..
Aren't quite accurate, it was 6 Franken, 2 Undecided, 1 Nelson-Pallmeyer. Like you, I was the one JNP delegate.
One delegate came down to a coin toss between the Undecided subcaucus and JNP subcaucus, which the Undecideds won.
Thank you for that correction....
....like I said above, I wasn't sure what happend downstairs. It is interesting that Mike Ciresi, for all of the $$$ he has spent, only got 1 in CD4 and was completely shut out in the CD5 portion.
I will put the correct results above.
How in the heck did the distribution of delegates come down to a coin toss???? I think you should maybe write something on that. Was it to achieve gender balance??? Something doesn't smell right when you have to have a coin toss.
Surplus
The coin toss was because of the "surplus" -in other words, there were several subcaucus with "surplus" members, and the tiebreaking procedure is to give the last delegate to the subcaucus with the largest amount of members. Since the "uncommitted" caucus had the same number (thanks to a last minute defection from some pushy uncommitted people - how can you be uncommitted and pushy?) the procedure is to flip a coin.
Basically there were 150 people in the subcaucuses for a total of 9 delegates. You needed 17 to be viable and to get one delegate - you needed 33 to get two. This allocates 8 delegates, so you have to look at the surplus to determine where the last delegate goes.
I suggested that we rock-paper-scissors for it (best of three), but they weren't game for that.
Oh, and there was one
Oh, and there was one superdelegate in our subcaucus for JNP - won't say who it is, but there's that.