Saturday, May 06, 2006

"Super Saturday" Congressional District Roundup

A very busy day at the endorsing conventions.
We have coverage from DFL CD 5 , Republican CD 6 , DFL CD3 and DFL CD2.
Listen to the podcast here.
I talk to Wendy Wilde about her endorsement in CD3. I ask Mike Erlandson why he withdrew his name in CD 5 and is he really going to run in the September primary. We hear from endorsed congressional candidates Keith Ellison (CD 5) and Coleen Rowley (CD 2).






Wendy Wilde wins near-unanimous endorsement vote in CD 3.






Keith Ellison wows delegates in the 5th CD






Three final candidates for DFL endorsement in 5th- Keith Ellison, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer & Gail Dorfman






Coleen Rowley after winning DFL endorsement in 2nd CD

UPDATE:
Since I posted the podcast I had one of the Ellison delegates write to describe Mike Erlandson's speech:
All candidates were required to spend the first 15 seconds of their speeches stating whether they would abide by the endorsement. Unlike all the other candidates, Mike Erlandson did not do this. The only "heckling" that occurred was when one or two people called out once or twice during his speech, "Abide?" He ignored them, but when he ended his speech without ever answering the question, quite a few people called out again, "Abide?," at which point he said, approximately, "In politics, sometimes it's gut-check time - I'll see you in September."

I can see how he might have intended that to mean that he was withdrawing from consideration, but that's not how anyone I talked with understood it at the time - we thought he was simply saying that he wouldn't abide. Note that he got about 30 votes on the first ballot, and eventually had to phone Brian Melendez to tell Brian to withdraw his name.

As far as I could tell, the only "heckling" that occurred is what is described above.
When I was at the convention, I talked to the reporters in the audio booth. They said someone in the booth had to tell the DFL officials that Erlandson had said in his speech he was withdrawing. Apparently the audio of Erlandson saying that could not be heard on the convention floor, but it could be heard in the audio booth. That's plausible considering they were having several problems with the audio equipment.

Another delegate confirms Erlandson did say he was withdrawing:
I was a delegate at the 5th CD from the 60th Senate District, and I was sitting in the third row directly in front of the stage. I heard Mike Erlandson say that he was withdrawing his name from consideration.

There was a lot of crowd noise at the end of his speech that made it hard to hear.

1 Comments:

Blogger Jason said...

Awesome coverage. Thanks for the podcast and best of luck to Mr. Ellison.

2:16 PM  

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