Frost: strong speaker, talked about experience leading the DCCC, great wife bio (highest-ranking woman in the US Army at Major-General!). He wasn't terribly concrete, though, and didn't leave me with much of an idea about what he would and wouldn't do as chair.
Webb: extremely charismatic and attractive in speech, much less so (to me) in Q&A responses. Didn't (for me) overcome his negative, which is lack of national experience. And it is a bit ironic that he supported Dean for President but now opposes him for DNC chair -- wouldn't you say that if you're qualified for the first job you ought to be qualified for the second?
Dean: frankly, he was terrific. clearly has a deep knowledge of and detailed plan for party operations. says the DNC will pay for the ED's, PD's, and 2 organizers for all state parties - "so you can run a campaign for four years, not for eight months" (big applause). But he did make it clear that he'd speak out when he thought other party leaders were off-base (ie Reid saying Scalia would be a great nominee for Chief Justice). I will be happy if he's chair, and I was pro-Kerry for the whole 2004 cycle, so that's saying a lot for me.
Rosenberg: I'm partisan, but I thought Simon did an excellent job -- surprisingly passionate, got a lot of applause. Clearly he understands where the party needs to go and what it will take; he talked a lot about institution-building and recruiting millions of democrats as active members of the DNC. Confirmed again why he and Dean are the only two folks you'd want up against Rove and Mehlman.
Fowler Jr.: Never having seen him speak, and having heard raves from some friends who saw him recently in NYC, I had high expectations. They were not met. I'll forbear from saying much more. A very long 5 minutes.
Roemer: poor guy. Drew hisses -- lots of them -- when he said something along the lines of, "Not only should we keep an open door on abortion, but we should not let the party be captive to a special interest lobby with a narrow view." Ouch. Didn't connect much better with much else. Didn't even deliver very well on national security, supposedly his strong suit. He did helpfully point out that he had "visited new york several times."
Leland: Leland seemed like a genuinely nice guy who genuinely thinks that he could help the party by being the chair, a position for which his chances seem extraordinarily slight. He said he'd rather be Joe Torre than Randy Johnson. He did not seem very similar to either.
To be candid, today it felt like Dean's race to lose. But I think Frost, Webb, and Rosenberg also came across very well. If Dean doesn't get a majority on the first ballot, things could get interesting.
I didn't stick around for the Vice-Chair stuff, so i can't report.
Sightings: Donna Brazile, Harold Ickes, Al Sharpton, Mark Green (NY AG candidate). Chung Seto, NY Dems Exec Director, running around keeping everything organized (it was). Denny Farrell presiding.
Theater: not much, although there were lots of supporters of Marjorie Harris, Sharpton's candidate for Vice-Chair, who kept the lobby full of chants and sign-waving, and of course lots of college dems and interns and media, etc...
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