SD 41 Convention report

I was a delegate to the convention. There were a grand total of 266 delegates (and upgraded alternates) in attendance at the convention, which I thought was excellent since SD 41 is classically a more "red" district.

Senate District 41 is made up of west Bloomington and the entire city of Edina. By all rights the entire city of Bloomington should have its own senate district but we have been gerrymandered.

We started the day with a video of Al Franken welcoming us to the convention. He grew up in St Louis Park and we all got a chuckle when he deliberately mispronounced Edina, and called all the Edina people "cake eaters".

We then commenced to electing officers for SD41. The resolutions committee then handed out the 70+ resolutions that made it on the ballot from the caucuses. We, as individual delegates, were to vote for 38, with the top 38 vote getters being passed on to the state convention. The topics for the resolutions ranged from funding public transportation, to health care reform, to comprehensive sex education/assurance of access to contraception, to Veterans benefits/get out of Iraq.

We broke for lunch, and right after lunch we endorsed Andrew Borene as our state senate candidate and John Goetz as the state representative for 41A (Edina). No one was running for state representative for 41B.

We also elected people to represent SD 41 at the 3rd Congressional District convention, and also delegates to the state DFL convention.

Notable candidates in attendance: Andrew Borene (state senate candidate), John Goetz (state representative candidate 41A), Ford Bell (US Senate candidate), Amy Klobuchar (US Senate candidate), Tommy Johnson (US Representative candidate for the 3rd CD), Christian Sande (Secretary of State candidate), and Mike Hatch (Governor candidate).

All in all it was a very productive convention!

What did you think of Tommy Johnson? I haven't seen or heard anything about him yet.

He came to the convention toward the end of the day, so I think I was on overload. I did get the sense that he is energetic, which is one of the attributes necessary to unseat Ramstad.