Delaware Democratic Convention LIVEBLOG II
All the media and guests just got kicked out of the room.
Daniello is right here asking “where is he, he is probably in there.” He is probably talking about McG.
So UI and Geek are our only moles on the inside right now. They will comment here. And you can follow their twitter feeds here:
Tweets by liberalgeek
Tweets by UnstableIsotope
UPDATE 12:08 We are back in the room. UI got yelled at for blogging during the closed caucus apparently. Here is where things stand. Daniello won all the caucuses from what I can gather. NCC, Kent, Wilmington and Sussex. I assume now we are going to get the speeches from Daniello and McGlinchey. Perhaps McG can still leverage a rule change out of his candidacy but now will be the time to do it.
I was outside during the closed caucus, and saw some McG delegates down there while the closed caucus was going on! I wonder how many delegates skipped out on the straw polls. And I wonder if we are heading to a surprise during the real vote. Probably not, but that would be a neat manuever to hide McG’s strength and then surprise the establishment. The best way to beat the establishment is to lull them to sleep.
12:20 MCGLINCHEY IS NOMINATED, HE SPEAKS, SAYS BASED ON THE STRAW POLL, HE IS ENDORSING AND SUPPORTING DANIELLO TO UNITE THE PARTY, AND HE WITHDRAWS HIS CANDIDACY. DANIELLO IS REELECTED BY ACCLAMATION. The rest of the party leadership is being reelected without challenge right now.
I hope an agreement was reached, like a rule change to prevent the state party organization from interfering in primaries. If not, what was the point of this candidacy? A lot of money was spent for signage for McG. Surely there was a plan for a deal. But hey, maybe not. We will find out. Selander is still pointing and laughing at me. I am starting to get subconscious.
They’re still catherding right now. Very disorganized. Waiting for the fireworks.
Straw poll: 3 options
McGlinchey
Daniello
Undecided
Kowalko is very upset. We need to have nominations first. Kowalko doesn’t want a straw poll.
Motion withdrawn. McGlinchey is talking to Kowalko?
Straw poll going now?
Motion to give nominations first, before straw poll.
UI-Sounds like a deal might have been cut based on what you saw. Great reporting.
Daniello hand raising now.
Clarifying: NCCo caucus only
Looks like a majority for Daniello as far as I can tell.
Counting McGlinchey votes now. Looks like less to me.
Odds are, if Daniello has the majority in NCC, then Daniello’s got the votes. Don’t think that McG’s strength is downstate.
Definitely strength in the districts >20.
Counting undecideds now. About equal to McG votes. The question: is undecided + McG enough to put McG over the top?
The question: how many democrats does it take to count? The answer: more than you think.
We’re not getting the straw poll results now. I think they must be counting from all 4 divisions. I think it was pretty close.
For all you curious, I voted “undecided” as did liberalgeek.
Gilligan speaking for national committeeman. Nice speech so far. He’s talking about his mother and how she cried when Eisenhower was elected president.
Gilligan also reminding us that he’s old.
Karen Valentine – candidate for National Committeewoman.
Karen Valentine is a union rep. I’m not familiar with her, but she’s served 2 terms.
Harriet Smith Windsor speaking – candidate for Vice Chair, also superdelegate.
What’s the deal with everyone telling us they’re old? She retired after 46 years. I must say, she looks good for her age. Nice speech.
Jim Hussey – candidate for state Vice Chair. I’ll bet he’s going to tell us that he’s old.
Jim Hussey didn’t actually tell us that he’s old.
UI, they’re ALL old. Time for you to step up to help balance out the actuarial tables.
State treasurer – Rep. Helene Keeley. Patty Blevins is not running again.
Brian Selander thinks I’m funny. Hi Brian!
Sussex Co. caucus sounds like more fun. I wonder what they’re doing.
C’mon I want to know about party chair.
Brian S.: El Somnambulo sez that UI would be a great candidate in the 24th. Could you please talk to Jack?
State party secretary – 2nd term for Sen. Margaret Rose Henry.
Breaking now. Convention will come back together.
I assume both candidates will speaking.
Nominations open. McGlinchey is nominated, and speaking now, but he will be withdrawing.
MCGLINCHEY WITHDRAWS and NOMINATES DANIELLO
DANIELLO REELECTED BY ACCLAMATION.
My observations:
Danielo will probably win but is his own worst enemy. Speaking style reminds me of Grandpa Simpson.
Carper is an ass. “I brought so much money back to Delaware.” punctuated his rambling 15 minute address which he raced through.
Kaufman made me sad that he locked himself into this short term. It would be nice to have at least one Dem from Delaware in the Senate.
Markell kicked ass. Whatever happens as far as party chair, it is his party.
WINDSOR SMITH IS UNOPPOSED AND IS REELECTED AS VICE CHAIR.
Interesting. Piecing together the liveblogging, it looks like the candidates had agreed to a straw poll with the understanding that if either side had overwhelming support, the other would drop out rather than go to a full vote.
That would explain both UI’s recounting of McG talking to Kowalko, and DelDem’s account of Daniello looking for McGlinchey. Once Liberal Geek reported that Daniello had more votes in each of the four subdivisions (‘bulo’s surprised by Wilmington), the die was cast.
One unanswered question now is, will McGlinchey get anything out of this other than face-saving? There’s no way that he was going to press a ‘primary non-endorse’ change b/c the unions put heavy pressure on the party to endorse Carney.
BTW, El Somnambulo was very happy to see Helene Keeley get the Treasurer’s position. IESHO, Keeley was screwed over by Valerie Longhurst in the caucus leadership battle. Glad to see her recognized for all that she did to help the D’s win back the House majority. She was out knocking doors almost every night. If anyone gets a chance to talk to her after the convention, please thank her for all that she did.
Convention over. Some protest about HB5 not being passed. I will comment on that later.
Thanks everyone.
Drive safely. And, on the way home, if someone else is driving, be sure to check out this week’s “Bulo’s Music For the Masses”. It may be his best one yet. Besides, ‘bulo needs the hits!!
Who yelled at Unstable Isotope for blogging?
I would like the name. So that I can look them up and yell at them.
Thank you,
rich boucher
Apparently it’s somewhere in the convention rules. It seems kind of strange, considering everyone has cell phones. How are they going to stop someone from recording the meeting? Plus, how are they going to stop someone from saying everything that happened during the closed caucus afterward. Kind of strange.
That sucks, UI. I would really like to yell at someone.
It also seems strange for the party that has been leading the way on using the web for organizing and communicating. But we are talking about Delaware Dems here who seem (with few exceptions) very web phobic.
ps.
You guys did an awesome job today — sorry I couldn’t be there!
I suspect it is someone talking out of their ass. Nonetheless, I was quite discrete and tried not to annoy the people on either side of me.
Perhaps Rebecca will chime in.
Great job of reporting Geek, Delaware Dem and Unstable Isotope. I am so proud of you guys for going the extra distance and serving as delegates and bloggers. Huzzah!
The party rules require that the caucuses be closed to the public and the press. These days nothing very exciting or embarrassing happens, but these days people don’t drink and drive, so the delegates are a pretty orderly group. That wasn’t always the case.
U.I. It took a lot of us to count because folks kept putting their hands up and down. We should have organized it better, counting one section at a time, but we didn’t think of that until afterward. The whole straw poll thingy came up out of the blue this morning so we didn’t have time to think about the logistics of it. I have no idea which camp initiated this.
I heard a rumor that Brian did ask for consessions but they had nothing to do with primaries or the party spending money to defeat other Dems.
Which means we’re back to the Committee on Resolutions to hammer this out. I’m going to need your support and backup on this. If we do this the same as last time, the meetings will be at night in Dover, at the Kent County Building. Turn out is going to be crucial or I may get shouted down on this issue. I’ll let ya’ll know when, where, etc.
Rebecca – Just so that you know, getting the hard numbers was pretty useless. A simple guesstimate would have been WAY better. Spending all of that time trying to figure out if it was 35-65 or 36-64 was bad. Kowalko had a great point, but if both candidates wanted it, fine.Also, that should have been explained to the caucus by Eric when he announced the straw poll.
Thanks Rebecca. Since I was a delegate, I guess the liveblogging wasn’t a problem, I hope. Anyway, I’m sorry if I stepped on any toes. My bad!
The straw poll was very confused, but I understand now what was going on. I figure people put there hands up and down because they weren’t sure if they had been counted or not. Yeah, I think liberalgeek is right that there could have been a simple show of hands at first, at least to see if the majority was lopsided.
Why not the middle way that prevailed before 2005? Party could endorse but not spend money.
JD didn’t like that, and finally got his way on this issue once he became chairman. This clearly proved to be a bad idea, no matter who you supported in ’08, because it almost always aligns party money against challengers, which is bad for the long-term health of a party. If an incumbent can’t win on his or her own, without party $$, the incumbent is undoubtedly too enfeebled to be the nominee.
At the same time, the worker-bees on a committee [whether local, county-wide, city-wide or state-wide] should be able to voice their collective preference for the consideration of the electorate. That should be enough; no money should follow.
You are so right! Like I said, this hit us out of the blue and we were making it up as we went along. But, I do think that both candidates wanted a count, not an estimate.
Folks, I hear what you are saying about everybody bragging about how old they are. Sheesh! We gotta start a farm team NOW for 2013. Otherwise the nurses will be wheeling this team back in for another four years.
I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek but it did seem like a lot of the speeches focused on how long they had been in politics.
John Manifold,
A lot of this could be dealt with if we didn’t have that blasted September primary.
It isn’t just money, it’s propietary data bases, volunteer lists and other stuff that goes to the endorsed candidate. Because the winner of the primary absolutely must hit the ground running the very next morning s/he has to have access to these things. It all gets very complicated. If you give it to all comers then what’s the point of endorsing at all? If the loser gets pissed off and shares it all what’s the advantage to the winner?
Moving the primary to the Spring would solve a lot of our problems.
Rebecca,
Is there anything in the party rules about moving the primary to earlier? If so, can we get it in there? Also, I’d be happy to help in any way I can with the rules and resolutions.
Wasn’t Karen Valentine the student teacher on Room 222?
U.I.
At least the NCCo Executive Committee has some younger members and they represent more than half of the party. And the Governor is young.
Daniello was feeling nostalgic today but he will be the first to admit that the crowd looks pretty long in the tooth. And whoever observed that JDD looked tired was right, he was. This was no small battle. John and his supporters worked their tails off this past week. McGlinchey was a worthy opponent and it was no roll-over.
U.I.
The parties do not set the Primary Election date. The General Assembly does. They prefer the September date because they are in session in the Spring and if they have a challenger they have to balance their legislative calendar with a campaign calendar. Still, there’s got to be a way around this — legislative recess during election years or something.
Oh, and the other obstacle is that the legislative calendar is set by the Delaware Constitution. It would take two (or is it three) sessions of the GA to amend it. We’re talking years to get this change made. But, if we never start it will never happen.
Sounds like the same old same old to me.
Good luck! to those of you wanting and working for change.