Residual Forces

Sounds like it was an interesting weekend up in the 8th CD. (Via email & Wright County Republican)

For some reason I am reminded of the movie “Rudy”. If you haven’t seen the inspirational flick about a Notre Dame football walk-on it is worth renting. The subject of this post is the process of vetting candidates at Congressional District Conventions for the coveted position of National Convention Delegate/Alternate.

(from a press release circulated by Rudy Takala)

Minnesota’s 8th Congressional Republicans held their convention last Saturday, electing three delegates and three alternates to attend the national conventions in September. Local candidates included former State Representative Judy Soderstrom of Mora, Rudy Takala of Pine City, and Ben Wiener of Finlayson.

Things became livelier when many people were denied from running by the district Nominating Committee - including Rudy Takala, the chair of the Pine County Republicans. Ron Niemala, the chair of the committee, declared that he was too “young and inexperienced” to be permitted to run for delegate.

Dr. Michael Monte, secretary to the Pine County Republicans and a member of the committee, objected, saying, “We have some very qualified, enthusiastic candidates who have put a lot of time into running, and they should be allowed to compete.”

Niemala responded, “This is not up for discussion. We [the committee] are going to vote and go along with the vote.”

The civility of the discourse diminished when Christina Wilson, the vice-chair of the committee, held a copy of Takala’s Facebook page on display and pointed out that it described his political views as “libertarian,” arguing that it was inconsistent with the values of the Republican Party. Dr. Monte, a Baptist minister, attempted to continue the discourse but was told to “shut up” by Wilson.

The battle spilled on to the floor of the convention, where Monte described the committee to the more than 200-member assembly as a “travesty.” Takala continued, “This is what turns people off of Republican politics. They show up and are told that the decisions have already been made. Leadership tells the delegates what to do rather than the other way around.”

A motion was made to change the rules in order to allow for nominations from the floor without the consent of the committee. It passed, allowing eighteen people in all to run for national delegate. In order to win, candidates needed to obtain fifty-five percent of the votes. Candidates with less than twenty-percent were eliminated from the running.

Of the eighteen people running, five remained after the first round of voting, including Soderstrom and Takala. Soderstrom won on the second round. Takala continued to compete until the fourth round, where he was finally eliminated and thereby placed fourth overall.

The election for national alternates went considerably more smoothly. Ben Wiener won on the fourth round of balloting.

Takala praised the process, observing, “In most years, there are not enough freedom-minded delegates to overrule leadership. That so many were present this year is a big difference, and I can only hope that all of the new people will remain involved.” He offered his congratulations to Soderstrom and Wiener, “It encourages me that we have so many high-quality members in our area of the congressional district.”

Takala plans to run for national delegate again at the state level. The Republican state convention will take place in Rochester on May 29-31st and elect ten delegates to the national convention.

It will be interesting to see how other CD’s fair. I’m hearing a lot of chatter about how it could be very ugly in some.