County Convention

Yesterday was the convention for the county of Olmsted County where the precinct delegates go to elect delegates for the State and Congressional District conventions. Those people will then send delegates to the national convention in Florida.

It was a very long day...10hrs. The convention uses Robert's Rules of Parliamentary Proceedings which can make things quite confusing and we had a Parliamentarian there to settle disputes. We were warned before hand that the establishment would try to bypass certain aspects of the convention in order to prevent others from participating. I was prepared for an entire day of corruption!

In the beginning we adopt the rules, which are rules that the convention must then abide by for the rest of the proceedings. This was the important part to watch as changing the rules could mean the rest of us (outsiders) were then just observers. The committee had selected a slate of names as delegates to elect for the next conventions prior to the meeting and put these forward as those that had "served the party" in the past. The rules stated that nominations from the floor would be allowed and someone tried to strike that rule and adopt the preprinted slate. Fortunately that got shot down. The next attempt was on trying to make all floor nominated folks declare their candidate. Also shady practice as it nullifies the secret ballot...and I though Democrats were the only ones for card check! hahaha

All the precincts and townships were grouped into House Districts of which there are 4. Each HD sends people to the next conventions and ours was the biggest sending 20 people. I had received a slate from the Paul people of those who they knew (as it turns out...thought) were supporters to try and get to the next round. My name was not on that list. It turned out that the list was put together haphazardly and some didn't show up and 1 supported another candidate. We broke for lunch before voting on my HD and I was sitting with one of the campaign people and said, "I think I'll just nominate myself in case the others don't show up and at worst I can dilute the vote a little." He thought that was a good idea.

When they took nominations from the floor I got in early (#4 I think) as I remember hearing that the first ones on the list have the best chance. Most people who nominated themselves didn't say anything but their names. Those that did say more usually gave a fairly extensive political resume. I don't have one of those so I gave a short speech about living in Europe, government takeover of healthcare, and the socialization of industry. I tried to keep it short and on track with the main complaints of the party faithful. I finished with a bit of emotion on watching the outcome of the 2008 election and hope for 2012. Much to my surprise, it worked. I am now a delegate for the State and CD conventions.