Senate District Convention Writeup

[Dan J 277]

I just got back from the DFL Senate District Convention. This write up is for those who are interested in how the political process works beyond the voting booth. This is a bit long, but a lot happened today. Most of this specifically applies to Minnesota; I’m not really sure how parties in other states handle this process.

Start with a little bit of information as to where in the process this convention is.

1. Start with precinct caucuses. Those were on Super Tuesday for Minnesota. Get elected or self-nominate yourself to the Senate District Convention.

2. Senate District Convention endorses candidates for state congress and senate seats. A small number from this group are chosen to take part in the State convention, and congressional district conventions. More on that delegate selection process later.

3. Congressional District/State convention. The state convention encompasses about 2000 delegates and takes 3 days. Same delegates go to both, but they are to endorses candidates for Congress and Senate. A very few from those two conventions are then selected to go to the DNC Convention. The process up to this point is done every 2 years.

4. DNC Convention - Endorse presidential candidate. Once every 4 years.

Along with endorsement of the candidates, platform resolutions put forth in the precinct caucus for the state or national party platform, are voted on and the passing resolutions go to the next level.

On to the Senate District (SD) convention. Once you get in, you register as a delegate or alternate delegate. As an alternate, you can only be promoted to full delegate if not enough of the delegates show up from your precinct. You get a badge indicating that you are a delegate and what precinct you are from.

The convention itself is very procedural. You can nominate candidates for officer positions, challenge or amend rules, and everything is adopted or not by a majority voice vote or 2/3 majority depending on the issue. This book is the basis on how the convention is run (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert%27s_Rules_of_Order). Even the convention rules says to refer to that book if there are no rules pertaining to a specific situation.

After the welcome, adoption of agenda, adoption of the rules, the convention moves into appointing officers for different positions for the senate district. While some nominations are recommended by the nominations committee, more nominations can be added from the floor. Each candidate had about 2 minutes to speak, and then officers were elected, by voice vote. The rules did call for a ballot, but for each election someone offered a motion to suspend the rules, and it passed every time.

After all the elections for party positions were handled, the delegates split into two groups for each state congressional district. There were two for this convention. For one group, the same candidate was running for reelection, so it was a simple voice vote to re-endorse the candidate. The other group had to replace a retiring state congressperson, for which there were 4 candidates. Each candidate got about 5-10 minutes to make a speech. Then it moved to a 30 minute QA, everyone answered the same questions. After that, the delegates in that district voted for thier candidate. This is done in a series of ballots if no candidate gets 60% in one vote. If you get less than 10% of the vote, you cannot participate in the next ballot. In our case, one candidate did get 58% of the vote, and then the rest of the candidates just dropped out so there wasn't a second ballot.

After that, we began the selection of delegates to the state convention. This is where the fun starts. Its a bit complicated so hopefully i can explain the entire system. Out of the 400 some delegates at the convention, only 17 and another 17 alternates can be chosen to go to the state convention. Of the 400 delegates, at least a quarter wanted to get picked. So this is how it was done.

Sub caucuses are nominated and formed around a certain issue and or candidate. Each sub caucus has to get enough delegates to join them, in order to get enough people behind that sub caucus to allow the sub caucus to select a delegate (and alternate). The minimum number you need is determined by the number of voting delegates divided by the number of available delegate slots. In our case, we had about 375 delegates still around and participating in this part. We had 17 delegate slots to be filled. So the number of viability was 22. This means, each sub caucus needed at least 22 members to be able to promote one delegate. If you have 44 you can promote 2. If you have something like 40, you may get a remainder delegate to be able to promote 2.

We went through 2 rounds of this, trying to get people to come over to your sub caucus. Initially we had about 35 sub caucuses, and by the time round one was over, it was down to about 10-12. At this point the number of viability is determined, and those sub caucuses that are short, are dissolved or absorbed into others. Second round is like the first, just fewer people changing caucuses.

Once the delegates for each caucus are determined, then those who want to go onto the state convention have to give a quick one minute speech as to why they should be chosen. The sub caucus itself then votes as to which delegates will get selected as delegates and usually the person with the next highest score is the alternate.

Throughout the convention, when there was a break for ballot counting, or something else. Candidates or someone on their behalf would stop and give a quick speech. We had speeches from Al Franken and Jack Nelson-Pallmayer both senate candidates running for Norm Coleman’s seat. Kim Ellison spoke on behalf of her husband Keith Ellison, who is up for reelection, but was not contested from the Democratic Party. Most of the candidates for state offices and those who represent the district but where not up for reelection also took a chance to speak.

It took something like 10 hours to go through this entire process. But politically, it’s about as hands on as you can get in the process. I would have loved to be part of the state convention, but I wasn’t prepared for the process of selecting state delegates. Turnout was incredible. For about half of the people there (including me), it was their first SD convention. With such strong turnout in the primary process for the Democratic Party, November will defiantly be interesting.

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Very interesting. What a great experience, Dan.