4th District Convention Report

I attended the 4th District Convention yesterday in Ft. Dodge. It was my first district convention experience and was pretty fun, though somewhat long. I met Drew Miller and Gavin there, both had laptops and Drew did some live-blogging from the event. Yes, Mr. Deeth, we did have wireless Internet. I didn't take any notes, so I am just going to toss out a summary.

Daryl Beal, State Senator from Ft. Dodge was the convention chair. He did his best to make the day exciting, and yes glamorous. State Sen. Jack Kibbie, Senate Co-President, was there and spoke later in the day. I didn't know much about Kibbie, but from the sounds of it the Iowa Democratic Party owes a lot to him for his years of great service. These 2 State Senators showed me once again how bad Larry "Quite your Fibbin" McKibben is.

Denise O'Brien, candidate for Sec. of Ag, was the first speaker. She was very enthusiastic, which was really good early in the day. She said that will be traveling in a green bus during the 30 days before the primary that will run on homemade bio-diesel. Her son-in-law has been collecting firer grease from local restaurants for awhile and making the homemade biodiesel. (Doing a little research when I got home O'Brien has a blog that is actually updated frequently.)

Selden Spencer, running for Congress against Tom Latham, spoke next. His message was great and he had some fantastic lines. He explained how he decided to run, how the Republicans have failed us, and what he wants to do when he is elected. His message really excited the crowd. He mentioned being a rubber stamp and empty suit in the same sentence as Latham often and got loud cheers each time. You could tell that Spencer is new to running for office. His message was great, but he could use a little more polish on his delivery. One piece of advice from this amateur is to make sure you take up a bottle of water with you when speaking. As he speaks more and more, he will get better. His message was there and the excitement was overflowing.

Perhaps, the most interesting part of the convention was the voting for the state central committee. There were 4 females and 5 males running with 3 females and 3 males getting elected. To be elected you needed to have a majority of the votes, which meant that we would vote over and over until people got over 50%. After it got narrowed down to just 2 females, the two woman tied, so one of the them decided to drop out, so we wouldn't have to vote over and over. For the most part, the people I voted for made it!

Sec. of State candidate Michael Mauro spoke. He stressed how important it is to have a Democrat as Sec. of State, pointing to Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. Mauro talked about his experience running elections in Polk Co. and how that would be valuable as Sec. of State.

Dusky Terry came and spoke. He had a lot of the same ideas as O'Brien and made it sound like whomever was the last Sec. of Agriculture did not do a very good job with factory farms and water quality. He did not say this, but that is the feeling I got from the speech. Terry said that Iowa needs to improve a lot in those areas. Terry speech was really good, he had it down. It eerily seemed like a TV commercial. Terry is young and seems smart, so he should be a part of Iowa politics for a long time. I liked his ideas, but I also like O'Brien's bus idea. (I couldn't find a website for Terry, maybe I need another cup of coffee.)

Vilsack couldn't make it because of the weather, so he called in. He had some good comments about the same old stuff. It would have been nice to have him there in person, then you could compare the current candidates to him a little easier.

Ed Fallon had John Tapscott, a former candidate for Governor in the 197o's , speak for him. He focused on campaign finance reform and gave a very passionate speech. He said, "if you read the platform that will be approved today, there is only one candidate that stands up for that and that is Ed Fallon. Ed is for a woman's right to choose and against the death penalty." He really showed the differences between Fallon and the other 2 candidates.

The platform process started up and I left the main room to go chat with some people. At this point, my attention span was wearing down and I was getting tired of sitting. I got to talk with Drew, people from the Spencer campaign, Tom Harrington and some other people from Story Co.

Russ Feingold showed up at the same time as Chet Culver. Being a Senator trumps being a candidate for Governor, so Feingold spoke first. He kept his speech short and to the point. He was very enthusiastic and so was the crowd. I think the Democratic base does support the censure by the sound of the applause Feingold got. There was bit of confusion when Feingold said "it is very important that Iowa elects a Democratic Governor and we have 3 great candidates including our next Governor right here!" Culver waiting to speak next, was the only candidate for Governor in the room. Feingold came back later and cleared it up that he did not endorse any candidate for Governor.

I didn't listen to closely to Culver. I went and talked with Feingold and the people from the Progressive Patriots Fund and talked to people running the Spencer fundraiser. From what I heard Culver said all the right things, but it is just hard for me to get excited about him.

Feingold's speech at the fundraiser was full of excitement. He got many ovations, most were standing ovations because most of the people were standing around the pool at the hotel. Many of the people attending totally agreed when Feingold said Democrats need to stand up and show some spine. From what I heard from people in the crowd is that Democrats need to stand up for us because we have their back out here. I think that was the whole theme from Feingold's speech. Hopefully, Feingold comes back to Iowa often in the future.

Spencer and Blouin followed (too bad Fallon couldn't make it), but I didn't pay much attention. I went to shake Feingold's hand before he left and then found the beer cooler. After a long day, a cold one sounded real good.