This coming Saturday, February 23, promises to be a very interesting day in MI Democratic Party politics, as the main event of the annual party convention to be held at Cobo Hall in Detroit will be the highly contested election of the state party chair.
The incumbent, Mark Brewer, has been in office more or less uninterrupted for the past 18 years. This year he faces his first serious challenger in quite a while, Lon Johnson, who burst onto the scene two weeks ago with an endorsement announcement by the entire Michigan congressional delegation. Since then, it’s been a battle of the endorsements, as each candidate strives to secure big union backing along with that of big name politicians in the state. I have no prediction myself as to the winner, but I am definitely eager to go to cast my own ballot.
(Eclectablog has lengthy interviews with both candidates on his home site: see Mark Brewer and Lon Johnson. They’re both well worth the read, as is Eclectablog’s coverage of the Washtenaw County Dems meeting on Friday, February 9th.)
I’m hoping that some other Motor City Kossacks will be at the convention too, partly with the possibility in mind of setting up another get-together there. I see two possible ways that we might be able to attach a meet-up of sorts to the event, if anyone’s interested.
First, there is a “Blue Tiger Blogger” caucus set for 10:00-12:00 in room W2-67. Apparently this caucus has met before, though it has not (yet) become a regular group. That might be a place to rendezvous, at least, and perhaps plan for a MCK lunch nearby.
Second, it might be possible for us to go out for a bite after the convention—though I guess there is at least a chance that the meeting may well go long and discourage that sort of thing.
I’m posting this now to see if there’s any interest in having a meet-up on Saturday, so please do feel free to weigh in below.
I also have good group news to share. We’ll have a new co-administrator, surelyujest, to help out with keeping the group organized. Many thanks to surelyujest for being willing to accept this role. And I’ve succeeded in reaching people to confirm their OK with sharing contact information with the whole group—so that means I can now change the status of every Motor City Kossack to be a group Editor, a process I will be doing this evening while tending this diary. That means we can ALL send and receive group Kosmails (and receive all past Kosmails and group acceptances as well). The system takes a little getting used to, but I think it should enhance communication considerably. Why, with this change in place we can even discuss things like a meet-up without resorting to a diary! Not that diaries aren’t good methods of communication for their own sake, of course. In addition, every Editor will be able to republish diaries from the group queue (without waiting for me to notice that they're there). These are all important advances, and I'm glad that they have finally come to pass.
I look forward to seeing you all soon, one way or another.
If you’re reading this and wondering if the Motor City Kossacks is the regional DKos group for you, please drop me a Kosmail. Our members come from all over SE Michigan with a few honorary folks from around the country, too. We’d be delighted to have you join us!