State Central Fallout

A lot has been said today regarding the MN GOP State Central Convention that took place today. You can look for yourself at KvM, ARUC and RF. I had a conversation with a delegate or two (including a CD VP and a SD Chair) since the meeting ended, this post will focus on their thoughts and mine after listening to them and reading some of the other things I've seen on the blogs today. I will also add that I am a still novice in this arena, so feel free to shoot the arrows at me if you like. First, on Wednesday I heard this thing was getting ugly, REAL ugly. After hearing that, my thought was that events like this can result in one of two things, a stronger party if people get over this (especially if the winners are humble and losers are forgiving and open minded) and get back to work OR a temporarily debilitated party that has people who are unable to let go and move on to fight in '06. I hope the dust will settle the next few days and people start mending bridges, fences or whatever metaphor you prefer. A delegate who was part of the "mutiny", as some have called it, had two main rationales. He agreed with some others that Ron (Ron = Ron Eibensteiner and Carey = Ron Carey for the remainder of the post) was losing touch with the grassroots of the party and he was very disappointed with the lack of initiative for things such as training for people ready to learn and work for the state party and BPOUs. One specific instance was when a meeting was scheduled with Ron E. To meet with him and a strong potential candidate for a US House seat. The meeting was set, it was close to Ron's house and this potential candidate was just looking for a small bit of reassurance the state party would support him. Ron was a no-show, no call, just an excuse later that he had a "scheduling conflict". When you have strong potential candidate that is ready to go, isn't this inexcusable, not to mention rude. That said, as short as two months ago this delegate was on a list of names that was supporting and ready to endorse Ron. The problem is that over those two months he did not receive a single phone call from Ron or Eric Hoplin, but every other candidate contacted him personally (remember there are only ~347 delegates so a phone call to each is not asking too much). So it was just in the last few weeks that he was moving away from Ron. He voted Pulkrabek and then Carey today. After all that happened, this delegate was obviously upbeat. He knows that the Governor and others come away wounded by this, but he feels calmer heads will prevail, relationships will be built and positive change will happen. Specifically, he REALLY likes Hoplin even though he has had a few negative experiences with Eric. He believes that Eric has strong potential, just rough around the edges and with a Carey as the chair some of those edges will be smoothed out. Other delegates in the same SD as this delegate stayed in Ron's camp, so you can see how difficult this was for all the delegates today. I know all these people and this event made the last four days difficult ones for them. What is my perspective? Well, first of all I confess there are many things I do not know about the topic. So, maybe I should just be careful and stick to what I know? I know that it was a rough day for the MN GOP, I know people on both sides and they both want the same end result. For the party to come out of this stronger, I know that ALL parties need to leave the bickering and ugliness where it belongs, in the past. The "winners" need to work their arse off the coming weeks talking to the people on the other side, they need to be humble and ready to listen (the numbers, 196 to 151, do not indicate a mandate for Carey). The "losers" from today need to swallow their pride, and be ready to work with the new group. Easy for me to say, but I guess that's the luxury of my position. Time will tell...