Recap of Marshall County Convention

This was my first convention, so I learned a lot and found it be interesting. I am a delegate to district and State, but I might not be able to make it to state.

Former Lt. Gov Bob Anderson spoke on behalf of Dr. Selden Spencer, who is running against Tom Latham in District 4. Anderson gave a great speech about how the time to get involved is now and we raised nearly $500 for Spencer. There was also a person from the Blouin campaign that came to talk (he was an hour late though and interrupted the dicussion on the platform). He talked about keeping the work they are doing now going, working with the state legislators, and the importance of providing all children preschool and health care. (note, Fallon wants to provide health care to ALL Iowans, not just children).

I passed a plank on Clean Elections and one revoking corporate personhood and there was a very good plank passed in opposition to the Sensenbrenner-King Anti-Immigration bill.

We sort of broke into preference groups. They asked who you were leaning to when you registered. I am supporting Fallon. Then they they came out with the totals and started to assign delegates with that amount. Culver had 18 people, Blouin 16, Fallon 10, and Undecided had 32. Fallon was 1 person away from being viable. It was moved to break into pref. groups and a 30 min discussion ensued about breaking into groups would taking too long (if we had just done it then it would have taken less than 30 min). 2 people even stood up and said they wanted to move to the Fallon group. It was voted to not break into groups, by 6 votes, so Fallon was considered not viable and his people went to the Undecideds.

So Culver had 4 delegates, Blouin had 4 delegates, and Undecideds had 12. Since all the Fallon people were in the undecideds, 7 of the 12 undecided delegates are Fallon supporters and 4 of the alternates are Fallon people.

So it was a bad day and then a good day for Fallon. Most of the people heavily involved with the party in the county are Blouin supporters (including our state rep who endorsed Blouin). That only translated into 16 people tipping their hat to Blouin, so I think he might have been the biggest loser in the end if there was one.

With 32 Undecideds it shows that most people haven't made up their mind, so the race will come down to who has the best organization on the ground in the end.