Whew. What a day – Karen and I went as delegates to the DFL SD62 convention, and man, are we tired. We went to our precinct caucus back on March 7th without a real clear understanding of the process, who we got to endorse, etc., and as you’ll know if you read this blog the last month has been über hectic for both of us: we were barely able to find the time to properly research the state senate candidates, let alone make a decision. We’d been tipped off early on to keep an eye out for Matt Gladue, but this Alex kid was running a really high-energy campaign, and what about Scott and Tina and … Who to endorse?

Finally last week we went to a house party for Matt hosted by one of our neighbors, just a few of us and him, and it was one of those incredibly awesome moments of really connecting with a candidate. He was articulate, passionate, intelligent, and listened to what we were asking and saying. His answers were honest and didn’t smack of being tailored to what he thought we wanted to hear – and he had concrete plans! He had experience! In short, it was the kind of meeting I wish I had been in two months earlier so I could have devoted more time and energy to the campaign: here was the candidate I had been looking for. We went home, contributed, and emailed Matt and his campaign manager to get involved. So today at the convention we were two of the people running around in Matt Gladue T-Shirts handing out stickers, polling our precinct, and most important/difficult of all – trying to convince the undecided delegates to vote for our boy.

I’ll spare you the blow by blow – you can read the link above for the rules on the convention endorsement procedure, but the end of the story is that Matt came in a very strong second place after 4 rounds of voting and out of 8 candidates – but he did it with such class, dignity, and eloquence that he raised the bar — even in losing — for the winner. I feel incredibly happy to have been a part of his campaign, even for a few short days.

Here’s a picture (blurry, sorry) of him on stage with the endorsement winner – Patricia Torres Ray. She immigrated to Minnesota from Columbia (I think) 19 years ago and will make an excellent state senator, so our district is still a winner.

In other politics, we got to hear 1 minute stump speeches from the 8 thousand people running for US Congress and US Senate in our district, as well as state Governor – and I have to say that Becky Lourey was a big, big hit. We started to do the whole process of sub-caucusing to help her get delegates at the state convention, but Karen and I had been fighting headaches all day and couldn’t deal – plus Bruno was about due to explode if he didn’t get his evening walk… So we had to leave. But it looked like she had good support, and hopefully she’ll get some good delegates from our district.

Finally, our bulbs are starting to come up!! Spring is coming, the days are getting longer, and there are still good people out there running for office…

I was going to write a post about how Alex Eaton has a huge crush on me – seriously, for a while he was calling me almost every night – but I have since come across something on his website that makes me reconsider his bid for state senate:

I don’t see any of the other candidates working to protect us from the scourge of demonic babies…

Karen and I attended our first ever precinct caucus on Tuesday night. It was informative but confusing, fun but boring, and left me both excited and nervous. Basically – as I understand it – the Minnesota DFL has local precinct caucuses and then several endorsement conventions before the primary election. Non-endorsed party candidates may continue to participate in the primary election, but it seems the endorsement is a big enough deal it’s very hard to win without it.

We’re both delegates for Senate District 62, so we’ll be attending that convention on April 1st and helping decide who gets endorsed. We opted not to be delegates for the county convention, so I think that keeps us out of the later state convention as well – which I think means we don’t get to help endorse a candidate for governor. Too bad, because I want to vote for Becky Lourey… But in lieu of that fun we get to sort through six(!!) candidates for State Senate in our district. Whoa.

So yeah, good times. I think a lot of precincts (ours did) passed resolutions to get Instant Runoff Voting into city elections – but by "passed" I mean passed on to the city convention where they’ll be voted on for inclusion into the DFL platform. Big fan of IRV, and maybe if people can start to see it work at the city level they’ll be more willing to get it statewide and then nationally.

Finally, some depressing numbers. I would hope that even without a scientist for a dad I’d be able to look at the evidence and the unwavering support from the scientific community and realize that hey, turned out the earth wasn’t flat, the universe wasn’t geocentric, maybe time to update the old creation myth too? Makes. Me. Crazy.