Terri Bonoff, Ashwin Madia and Jim Hovland are all vying for the DFL endorsement in the MN-03 race to replace Jim Ramstad. The endorsement convention is April 12th and senate district conventions start soon. All three campaigns are working hard to reach out to the 4700 delegates to the state senate conventions. They will be winnowed down to about 154 plus superdelegates for the congressional convention.
I met with Bonoff's Campaign Manager, Ken Sanguin early Saturday evening to talk about how the race was going.
-- cross-posted from mnblue.com, home of the Norm Coleman Weasel Meter --
The weird thing is that while there will be about 154 folks attending the convention, there are exactly 139.5 delegates. The way it works is MN-03 get a percentage the people who attended the last state convention. Apparently, there is some complicated math involved. Sadly, I don't understand it, but there will be some people who will cast half a vote. MN-03 is the only district that does this apparently.
Super delegates are the elected Representatives and Senators plus any state and national party officials. I think there are about 25. Ken was obviously pleased Terri has all the legislators except two as supporters and will go into the convention knowing she has their support.
The other bizarre part of the process is after the senate district conventions are done by March 15th, the campaigns have about a month to connect with the 154 folks going to the MN-03 convention. Ken said that Terri will be personally contacting all of them and obviously, she's got quite a bit of time in which to do it.
Another way of looking at it is the all three campaigns will most likely know where all the delegates stand going into the convention as there are so few.
Basically, all three campaigns are focused on contacting the 4700 delegates to see how many will be attending their Senate district conventions. It's likely that whatever campaign is best organized at the senate district conventions will get the most of their delegates to go on the the congressional convention. Unlike most of the precinct caucuses where there was rarely a competition to become delegates to the next level, there will be walking subcaucuses.
For anyone going, I highly recommend Grace Kelly's Delegate Guide. It explains everything you could possibly want to know about the process and even provides helpful hints and strategies.
I asked Ken about how caucuses went and if he heard any horror stories. The worst he'd heard was of two Republicans who wanted to switch parties and caucus as Democrats for Obama. They were given a hard time by some not terribly enlightened precinct caucus volunteers. Otherwise, turnout was massive and enthusiastic. "Despite knowing turnout was going to be huge," he told me. "It was still overwhelming. There were just so many people turning out."
"All campaigns need to second choices of delegates," Ken explained when I asked about if the race was staying clean. "So everything is staying really positive. The only negative stuff going on is arguments between party activists that have probably been going on for years if not decades."
Here's info about the MN-03 Senate District Conventions:
SD32 - Maple Grove H.S., 9800 Fernbrook Ln N. 3/8 8:00am
SD33 - Orono H.S., 795 Old Crystal Bay Rd. 3/15 at 8:00am
SD40 - Burnsville City Hall, 100 Civic Center Pkwy. 3/15 at 10:00am
SD41 - Valley View Middle School, 6750 Valley View Rd. 3/15 at 9:00am
SD42 - Eden Prairie H.S., 17185 Valley View Rd. 3/1 at 10:00am
SD43 - Robbinsdale Armstrong H.S., 10635 36th Ave, Plymouth 3/8 at 9:00am
SD44 - St Louis Park H.S., 6425 W 33rd St. 3/15 at 9:30am
SD45 - Robbinsdale Middle/Spanish Immersion, 3730 Toledo Ave N. 3/15 at 10:00am
SD46 - Brooklyn Center H.S., 6500 Humboldt Ave. N. 3/8 at 9:00am
SD47 - Oxbow Creek Elem. School, 6505 109th Ave N., Champlin 3/8 at 10:00am
SD49 - Coon Rapids H.S., 2340 Northdale Blvd NW 3/15 at 9:00am
SD63 - Richfield Intermediate School, 7020 12th Ave S. 3/8 at 9:00am
(compiled from the DFL 3rd District website)
-- cross-posted from mnblue.com, home of the Norm Coleman Weasel Meter --