State Central Live
I’m here, but don’t have a signal from the hall.
So far Norm Coleman gave a great speak. He sure seemed to endorse Eibensteiner. It was kind of hard to to hear from the back.
The Chair race seems 2 sided.
Eidensteiner has a good showing.
Carey has a good showing.
Pulkrabek has little to no momentum.
Update:
I loose the signal right at the door.
Anotther 10 feet and I was in.
But here’s the Sense of the climate.
It looks good for Ron. Heck I’ve been pushing for him. So has another blogger to be named later. FR
I’ve talked to a few people related to officials, and they feel confident about Ron’s chances.
They too want to avoid a mutiny.
Update:
Senator Brian LeClair is allegedly under attack. There is a motion to have him removed from the nominating committee, this was just relayed to me by a Delegate. The idea is that he is not a CD chair. Hum?
Update:
LeClair isw against Ron. The motion to remove LeClair was ruled out of order. Rumor has it that its because LeClair does not support reellection of Ron.
Update
Pulkrabek looks DOA. He’s kinda just milling around looking lost.
Carey has strong support from the 4th CD, but it decreases the farther outstate you get.
Ron just walked in with TPaw. He has both Coleman’s and Tpaw’s endorsement.
The vote count needed is 171 to get majority.
Its about to get going.
Update
Ballots are being turned in for Chair.
Pulkrabek fell apart.
Carey was strong
Ron was usual.
I think Ron has it.
Update
All the ballots are in, and they are counting them. 171 votes are needed to win. If no one gets that, each candidate with 10% goes on to another ballot, and so on and so on.
Update
Results first ballot
Ron – 141
Carey – 123
Bill – 73
May be a vote or 2 off.
All three will go to a second ballot.
Results of 2 Ballot
ron – 150
Carey – 156
Bill – 38
The Governot had a cclosed door meeting with Bil,, and he dropped out and backed Carey. Stabbing the Gov in the face. Its ugly guys. I’ve been talking with people on the floor and they are full of HATRED at Ron. They think that throwing him out will amke it all better. The problem is that the opposition to Ron keeps attacking and ighnoring the elected officials like TPAw and Coleman.
The Party will not recover in time from this.
Update
Its a bloody mutiny.
Ron Carey 196
Eibensteiner 151
I am worried about the party. Some one wise here just told me to be careful what I post. Damn that. We made a huge mistake today. Hostile take overs never go well. We have elected a guy who has insulted every elected Republican that matters. He refused to mention Mark Kennedy by name as the Senate Candidate. Sure the grassroolts is happy, but the elected ones now have an enemy at the helm.
We’re ging to vote on Deputy Chair now. I was an Eibensteiner guy because of Hoplin, now what? Hoplin was the grassroots answer for Eibensteiner. This sucks.
It really really sucks!
Update
The Deputy Chair is on a second Ballot.
Hoplin – leads
Igo -second
Lindsay – distant 3rd
There’s a pretty solemn mood in the room.
Everyone is getting 5ired. We’ve been here since 8 AM.
Update
We’ve had an Eva Young sighting. Seems nice in person, but we didn’t discus abything. Just neither one of us has horns. ha ha
Deputy Chair Ballot #2
Hoplin -167
Igo – 116
Lindsay – 51
168 votes needed
We’re on to a 3rd ballot with out Lindsay, he with drew.
We’ve cast the ballot and it is being counted.
Update
Its over, I’m home.
Hoplin won as Deputy with 165 votes out of 315.
I’m disgusted and hungry. I haven’t eaten all day. I’ll post my thoughts in a while.
Mutiny it is. Ron’s endorsements throughout his term will tell me who not to vote for. He has cut down the efforts of the localities for too far for me to give him the respect that a Chair should have.
He is a failure as a chair and there is nothing good that any of his supporters have been able to bring about. I find it pathetic that the very allegiance the GOP mauled the Dems for regarding Kerry, Clinton and Hilary is the same blind, misplace loyalty that the GOP now places in an incompetent Ron and crooked Eric.
If Pulkrabek is really interested in defeating Eibensteiner he’ll endorse Carey.
with 190 opposing votes, Eibenstiener is in trouble.
He is in trouble. But so is the Party. The underlying message is that the candidates are not following the oplatform. Carey refused to mention Kennedy for the senate seat.
Sure the Grassroots won today, but the candidates got stabbed in the back.
Don’t be so worried. We’ll all kiss and makeup. Frankly, as you may have noticed, the only candidate who was actively supporting Eibensteiner was Pawlenty. Kennedy, Kline, Kiffmeyer, Awada, Coleman and the rest just signed on because the governor asked them to. I know, for a fact, that more than a few of these aforementioned candidates were working for Carey behind the scenes. He and Pawlenty will get along fine, and we’ll all be better off in the long run.
Really?
will we. carey sure looked like a deer in the headlights when he realized just what he is responsible for now. He has to learn how to raise money, and in fact, the money was coming in the whole time. Now we have a guy who not only has to learn how to, but who to ask.
This whole damn mutiny was based on a chair doing everything. He won on that. He damn well better do it. The DFL is dancing a jig right now.
The angst against Ron is his incompetence as a Party Chair.
1) He did not support grass roots (and Hoplin’s track record with CRs proves he does not either). They are both top-down dictators.
2) He did not take sufficient blame for the abject failure of 2004. He pissed away a great chance to win the Senate in 2002 because of a questioning of his top-down dictates by Dick Day.
3) He selected Hoplin (a crook) for his running mate
4) He has no respect for the primary process. As a party chair he should have no say for candidates prior to the primaries and should fight for all endorsed candidates the have an “R” behind their name.
It is not about “following the platform enough” it is about following the low-ranking people in the party.
Pawlenty has lost support for not flip-flopping on various positions as of late…not because of his adherance or lack thereof to the platform. He promised not to raise taxes and is finding ways to back around that. He had a very clear position on gov’t stadium funding and has done a 180. He has flipped on the expansion of gambling (to my side, no less). For these flips we have lost faith in his ability to hold any principles.
What’s the Hoplin update?
Wow, that’s pretty close.
I hope Hoplin cleans up his act…
triple_a:
No hard feelings but I think this a just a continuing manifestation of the painful results of not willing to compromise. People would rather throw away our majority in the US Senate then rejoice that we have *finally* confirmed some judicial nominee’s.
Now the SSC would publically slap Republican leaders in the face because they were not ideologically “pure” enough?
I’m disappointed that Eibenstiner lost. I’m concerned that the Republican party is developing a echo chamber. Instead of finding out how the majority of Minnesotan’s would like to be represented, they are more concerned with their own ideological views being forced on anyone who associates with the party. And if they don’t start showing some willingness to compromise, they will be a minority party again.
It’s good to promote your views, but we need to advance them slowely. Take abortion for example. Most of the delegates would probably be happy if abortion was banned tomorrow. And they would support a candidate who would commit to that. At the same time they would probably oppose a candidate that was pro-choice except for 3rd trimester abortions. So, what’s better? If I felt the candidate that was prochoice would have a better chance of winning, that’s the candidate I would support. And then I would work on banning 3 trimester abortions. Then take another step. Until I reached my goal.
But I get the feeling the most delegates would oppose such a candidate even if they knew that the candidate that was ideologically “pure” would lose. They’d rather lose everything, then push the state or country a little bit toward their position. And they’d rather have a chair that is ideologically “pure” then a chair that has helped ideologically “impure” candidates win. And I’m a little disturbed by that.
Also, I think that the delegates were on a high last year thinking, hoping, and virtually being “promised” a Bush win in Minnesota. Republicans did better in 2004 then in 2000. You’d think that people would be happy. But for people who can’t compromise, doing better is no better then doing nothing at all. Upset at losing, they needed someone to take their frustration out on. They needed a scapegoat to pacify their frusteration. Today they got a scapegoat and sent a message that they had power to “ideologically purify” the party all at once.
That’s not the party I want. I want a party that can have ideological goals but then can compromise to get there. I want a party that isn’t ready publically to publically flog an elected offical who doesn’t “toe the party line.”
When I run for State Represetative, which I want to do in a few years, I want my campaign slogan to be “Compromise: Together We Can Make Minnesota Better.”
What will the ramifications of today’s “mutiny?” I don’t know, but I’m concerned that if the party does not learn to compromise, they will never learn to connect with a long-term majority of Minnesotans.
-Brent
[...] mation war here at home to keep them safe over there.
« State Central Live
Mutiny – State Central Wrap Up
[...]
I just got done talking to a CD VP and a SD chair. I’ll be sharing comments in a post later tonight (after kids are in bed). I thought the comments I heard were very insightful to why this “mutiny” happened.
SD63: Yes, and it still sucks.
Brent: As much as you and I went back and forth before, I agree. We can’t attack our party leaders (McCain excluded) for a vote here and there. The crap today should have been in the endorsing battle next year. That’s when ideology matters. By picking the uber right guy, they are giving credit to the kingmaker crap. That if the chair is way right, so will the candidates.
We also do have to play politics. You can’t force votes. You can’t bully your way into the majority and keep it. This group that is running this party will kill any chances it had in 06. Quote me on it. Unless they change, we’re done.
Has anyone seen the glee in the MN Lefty blogs? Its sad.
Good luck with that slogan with this crowd.
Triple_A Said:
“He is in trouble. But so is the Party. The underlying message is that the candidates are not following the oplatform. Carey refused to mention Kennedy for the senate seat.
Sure the Grassroots won today, but the candidates got stabbed in the back.”
Look, when you are in party politics your side will not always win. It is natural to be discouraged when your chosen candidate loses. However, all of this doom and gloom is really much ado about nothing.
You say on one hand that the Grass roots won today….you say on the other hand that the party lost.
Think about that for a second. Who the hell do you think “the party” is?
Contrary to what Ron Eibensteiner thinks we party activists (aka grass roots) ARE THE PARTY. Eibensteiner and the rest of the Executive positions are here to serve us…not the other way around.
It makes perfect sense now why you supported Eibensteiner. You obviously believe in a top down leadership where the party chair rules with an iron fist and the rest of us just shut-up and follow. How dare we party activists have a say in who leads us.
You pointed out that Carey didn’t mention Kennedy by name. I wonder if you are aware that according to our State Party Constitution that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be!
Party leaders are supposed to remain neutral in all races until a candidate has been officially endorsed. If Eibensteiner was supporting a candidate other than the one you supported, I guarantee you’d feel a little differently about this.
It will take time for you to calm down and step back and look at the situation honestly. However, in time I think you’ll see this was the best thing that could have happened to our party.
You may like the top down leadership style of Eibensteiner now, but I guaranatee you eventually, you would have found yourself on the other side of that like most of us other activists have already found out at one time or another.
What happens when the candidate you really like is being purposely torpedoed by the party chair because he wants someone in there that he can control? That won’t happen under Carey, but it happened way too many times under Eibensteiner. When it was your candidate that it happened to, I guarantee you’d be screaming for his head like the rest of us have done the last 3 years. Eibensteiner’s loss had nothing to do with the 2004 losses. This has been brewing since the 2002 election, but nobody was brave enough to run against him in 2003.
I don’t know how old you are, or how long you’ve been involved in politics. However, I’ve got to believe that at some point you will look back at this and be gratefull that people who’ve already been there fought hard to keep integrity in our party so that every candidate has a fair chance to run on their own merits instead of having to be buddies with the party chair to have a chance to win. With Ron Carey in office, that kind of integrity will return to our party.
Richard Nicely Says:
You pointed out that Carey didn’t mention Kennedy by name. I wonder if you are aware that according to our State Party Constitution that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be!
Party leaders are supposed to remain neutral in all races until a candidate has been officially endorsed. If Eibensteiner was supporting a candidate other than the one you supported, I guarantee you’d feel a little differently about this.
bmetzler:
I might point out that in the same speech where Carey refused to mention Kennedy he also promised to support Pawlenty. Either I missed the Pawlenty endorsing convention, or Carey is a hypocrite and betrayed his supporters just minutes after they elected him to not do that very thing.
Richard Nicely Says:
It makes perfect sense now why you supported Eibensteiner. You obviously believe in a top down leadership where the party chair rules with an iron fist and the rest of us just shut-up and follow. How dare we party activists have a say in who leads us.
bmetzler:
No, wait, I thought that it was the Carey supporters who wanted *strong* top-down leadership. One of the “problems” that the Carey had with the preveious leadership was that there was no top-down control of elected Republicans. Isn’t that something that Carey promised to do? Publically “flog” Republicans who don’t toe the party platform? The rest of us should just shut-up and follow. How dare party activists and elected official dare try to represent Minnesotans they way they want to be represented.
-Brent
Rich
We’re on the same side I thought. It was the mutiny that was all doom and gloom.
A party that is all grassroots and no elected officials is a bridge club at best!
So each and every one of us ten thousand or more should get a daily call from the chair for our input? Really? We’re the boss. Even if the 350 or so in th ehall are “The Bosses” that’s still impossible. Why do we even have a “leader” if he cannot lead? If he has to follow the rest of us, what’s the point? I never said you couldn’t vote how you wanted, don’t even try that. That’s low. I just said that you were extrememly short sighted. You got your way, but we will loose elections and legislative battles on this.
So, let me guess, you’re a grams guy? He lost the seat before! It ain’t his anymore!
My candidate was being torpedoes by the sitting Sec Treas, does that count?
I’m 29. I am already a BPOU chair. I have aspirations for public office. But if I have to represent the State Central Committee and not my disrtict or State, I guess I will reconsider.
You need to realize that your mutiny based on ‘principle” has turned off a lot of people. Yes we will try to work with you, but its seems like we have no choice. IT seems like the iron fist came from the delegates, listen to me or else. I’m worried that the current crop of voices is out of touch with real world politics now a days. Its seems that way. The old timers want to go back to business as usual instead of changing with time.
Wake up. Us younglings are here. Did you see all the young and bright young people supporting Eibensteiner? I’m one of them. Are we supposed to shut up and listen to the elders? Are yopur the bosses of the party? Or do we get a say?
As upset as I was yesterday, your commenting has really got to me. Are you saying I’m not welcome in the party? Are you saying I’m not old enough? Are you saying that I have to put in a certain amount of time before I can speak?
about Brent’s
Carey mentioned an open Congressional seat, that acknowledges Kennedy. Can’t we all agree its going to be Kennedy yet?
If we continue this BS until the endorsement, WE WILL LOOSE THE SEAT. Wake up, today’s elections aren’t a few short months. They are year round and require millions.
And if you want to go on and on about party leaders picking people, wouldn’t it be possible to say that Carey as the sitting Sec. Treas running against the chair conflict with that whole deal? And how about the former chairs strong arming the delegates with rhetoric about platform in support of Carey.
This was a bloody mutiny.
Please don’t start taking your queues from the Democrats. This whole “if I don’t get my way, I’m going to go home and take my ball with me” is not dignified enough for Republicans of any age.
You are seriously suggesting that just because we grass roots activists that have been in the trenches long enough to see the differences between Carey and Eibensteiner didn’t let you tell us what to do, that is the same as us telling you to “sit down and shutup”?
I’m sorry, it sounds like to me you spent all this time calling us extremists only to use extreme terms of your own to impune us because we didn’t agree with your opinion about who should be the leader. Nobody told anyone at that convention to sit down and shut up. I also didn’t say anything about not having any elected officials, so I’m not sure where your Bridge Club analogy is coming from.
Your analogies about iron fist of the delegates saying listen to me or else seem like you are taking things way out of context. Let’s put this in perspective here. We had an election where we were able to choose the chair of our party. That’s called democracy in action. Some of us felt that it was time for a new leader, and some felt that the old leader was just fine. The people wanting a new leader happened to have more votes. End of story. There is no complicated sub-plot here. It isn’t the end of the world as we know it.
I was not an Eric Hoplin supporter, I wasn’t even a Mary Igo supporter, so my guy came in 3rd place in that race. Do you see me sitting here crying about how unfair it was that the delegates didn’t listen to me? Can you imagine for a second how I’d sound if I did suggest that nobody loved me just because the didn’t elect the person I thought they should elect?
I think if you take a step back and look at it objectively, you might see that we aren’t the ones being so extreme here.
I think you just might find that predicting doom and gloom for the party because they didn’t choose the way you wanted them to is kind of extreme. Suggesting that this amounts to telling you to sit down and shut up because you are young, seems a little extreme to me.
That’s not what happened here. When looked at in context, it was just an election and like every election one side wins and one side loses. You will get over it. However, in the end because we have the opportunity to vote in the first place, we are all winners for being able to participate in the democratic process.
Brent,
You can’t seriously be suggesting that the Chairman of the Party coming out a year and a half before the election and stating who he wants to be the endorsed candidate is exactly the same thing as the incoming Chairman of the Party promising to support the sitting Republican Governor?????
Do you really think that anyone is planning to challenge Governor Pawlenty for the Republican nomination? Of course not. However, Mark Kennedy is running for an open seat. There is still a year and a half left for any other highly qualified candidate to decide they may want to run for that seat.
Do you remember how upset people were in 2002 when Dick Cheney called Tim Pawlenty and asked him not to run against Norm Coleman because they wanted Coleman to be the next Senator? People were outraged (and rightfully so) Pawlenty had been out campaigning and had a good shot at being the next senator. Instead he stepped asside and ran for governor.
How would you have felt if Tim had chosen not to step aside, and Norm and Tim ran against each other for that Senate seat? No matter which of the two candidates you supported, imagine if Ron Eibensteiner was pushing the other one. How would that make you feel?
I’m not even necessarily anti-Kennedy. He may very well be the best man for the job. However, I am for the principle of letting the endorsement process go without any pressure from the party higher ups. I’m assuming you are a huge Kennedy supporter. I happen to live in the 1st district, and my congresman Gutnecht considered a run briefly. I wonder if you would be just as supportive of Eibensteiner if he had come out early and supported Gil Gutnecht instead of your guy Mark Kennedy? Or if he had supported Rod Grams when he was considering running?
No, I don’t suppose you would agree with that, top down is only good if the guy at the top supports your pet candidate.
That’s why on principle I don’t like any party chair that makes a practice of doing that when he’s expected to remain neutral. And it isn’t just elected offices either. Eibensteiner got involved in party races also. What if when you ran for BPOU chair, if Eibensteiner came down to your BPOU convention and supported your opponent because he thought you were too young? I wonder how attractive that top down approach would have seemed to you then?
Why can’t we just have a fair process where nobody has an unfair advantage simply because the Governor or Party Chair owes him a favor? That’s what we were after plain and simple. Ron Eibensteiner had been privately rebuked by the Executive committee in the past for doing this sort of thing, but still continued doing it. It was time to get a Chair that would observe the integrity of the system. I’m happy to say that’s what we did. I’m sorry you aren’t happy with the choice.
Brent,
Please impart what district you will be endeavoring to win . . . i’ll be sure to support your opponent for endorsement.
bmetzler: When I run for State Represetative, which I want to do in a few years, I want my campaign slogan to be “Compromise: Together We Can Make Minnesota Better.â€
How about “Compromise: I have no backbone and will do whatever the DFL tells me to.” How can we be sure you’re not a DFLer in disguise?