Fraters Libertas

Twelve Hour Party People

Over the course of my involvement in politics I've attended a lot of conventions. Senate district conventions usually at local schools, congressional district conventions usually at hotels, and state conventions usually at venues like the Xcel Energy Center. Many a beautiful spring/summer day in Minnesota, have I wasted spent indoors dealing with the arcane machinations of the political party process. I've also helped organize and run a few of these events and know that it's a difficult, thankless task.

But in all my years of conventioneering, I've never heard of anything quite as fouled up as last Saturday's Minneapolis DFL get together. As Doug Grow reports:

The convention, which was to go about the business of endorsing a mayoral candidate, was to have begun at 10 a.m. Saturday.

Sounds simple enough. Endorse a mayoral candidate, dish out endorsements in a few other hotly contested races (park board, etc.), and go home. No problem, right?

But it wasn't until that time that the party leaders figured out they had a problem: There weren't as many seats as there were delegates.

After much fussing and feuding about who was going sit where (read Grow's column for all the gory details), the convention was officially called to order at around 11:30am. A little late but still plenty of time to take care of business, right?

Not for the Minneapolis DFLers. Apparently the voting for the mayoral endorsement did not start until 2:30pm. It ended after five ballots. And no endorsement:

Minneapolis DFLers went home late Saturday without endorsing a candidate in the mayoral contest between incumbent R.T. Rybak and his main challenger, Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin.

I've been through a few of these endorsement battles myself and know that they're no picnic. You vote. Then you wait as candidates and their allies try their best to woo delegates and create the impression that they have the momentum. Then you get the results. And then you vote again. Lather rinse and repeat until one of the candidates hits the magic number.

It's not surprising that the Minneapolis DFLers had such a battle on their hands on Saturday. What is surprising is how long it took them to go through five ballots.

The convention ended after 12 hours.

Twelve hours, five ballots, and no endorsement? I know that you're urban Democrats and getting things done is not your strong suit, but c'mon how hard can this be?

I gotta think that one of the problems is just the sheer size of this circus.

A rainy, cold day brought about 1,900 delegates to the convention in the Augsburg College gym, more than double the previous record for attendance.

1,900 delegates? According to figures from the 2000 Census the population of Minneapolis proper (just the city, not the surrounding 'burbs) is 382,618, which means that you had a DFL delegate at Saturday's convention for every 201 residents of the city. Even if you assume, as some local talk radio hosts do, that anyone living in Minneapolis must be a Democrat, this still seems to be gross overrepresentation. By comparison, there were 2510 delegates at the 2004 Republican National Convention representin' the whole frickin' country.

Being a bit more selective might have also helped ensure that events were more orderly as well:

Heavy turnout meant a long delay in getting started and a messy, chaotic marathon of procedural challenges and frequent heckling.

Frequent heckling? Procedural challenges come with the territory at political conventions (I swear some people live for Roberts Rules of Order), but frequent heckling does not. Or at least it should not.

Saturday's DFL convention was indeed a true reflection of the party that rules Minneapolis. They planned it poorly, started it late, wasted incredible amounts of time bickering amongst themselves, and in the end accomplished nothing. Residents of the City of Lakes can rest easy knowing that the party that dominates their City Hall is about effective on the weekend as it during the work week.