I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person, but this
one offers precious little to go on. First, with respect to "certain
political party ward conventions being clumped together at the Hennepin
County Government Center": at least for the DFL Party, only two out of
thirteen ward conventions have been tentatively scheduled at the Government
Center, which hardly constitutes "clumping." (I do not know whether other
parties are holding ward conventions or, if they are, where they will be
holding them.) Both those wards fall mostly within the same senate
district, so they were probably scheduled by the same person.
Second, with respect to "centralized control": each ward convention
is being organized through the senate district into which the ward mostly
falls, and most senate districts divided up the organizing among members who
lived in the wards being organized, so there were six senate districts and
almost a dozen organizers working on the thirteen ward conventions. As the
City DFL Party's chair, I acted as the clearinghouse for that organizing
(mostly for the sake of staggering the conventions over several weekends, as
the City Central Committee directed), and I can tell you that there was
barely any coordination, let alone any "centralized control" in the process.
(We are talking about the DFL Party here, after all.) The only "centralized
control" is exercised by the City DFL Central Committee, which set the
ground rules for scheduling the conventions and will set the final schedule.
That committee has over ninety members, its mailing list is just over 150,
and its electronic distribution list and its meetings are open to anyone
interested, so even its "control" is not effectively centralized.
Finally, with respect to "somebody out there looking for a temporary
advantage by finessing the parochial nature of ward conventions": I am sure
that, as in all politics and much of life, most players are looking for an
advantage wherever they can find one. The "parochial nature" of politics is
usually an unavoidable result of geographic districting and compact,
single-member constituencies. If there is a conspiracy there, it is a
mighty deep one, running back all the way to the Founders.
For anyone who is interested in getting involved in the
ward-convention process, the Minneapolis DFL Central Committee is meeting on
Monday the twenty-second at 7:00 p.m. at (ironically) the Hennepin County
Government Center, 300 South Sixth Street, Minneapolis. The agenda includes
the times, places, conveners, and rules for the ward conventions in March
and the City Convention in May. Any interested DFLer is welcome.
BRM
Brian Melendez (St. Anthony West, Ward 3)
Chair, Minneapolis DFL Organization
-----Original Message-----
From: Fredric Markus [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2001 5:44 AM
To: mpls-issues
Subject: [Mpls] FW: NewsFlash: All politics is still local!
Hmm. Are certain political party ward conventions being clumped together at
the Hennepin County Government Center for economy of scale or for ease of
centralized control? Is that the sound of barbarians at the gate I hear?
Will the restless natives be more manageable stuffed into the ground floor
of the HCGC rather than out in the more familiar settings of their
neighborhoods? Is it a bad plan to have a ward convention within the ward
where its delegates live?
Will the significance of this retreat to a municipal redoubt elude the new
class of grassroots planners who may have noticed the slow learning curve of
some traditional elites? It seems for example that weÆre all soon to become
amateur mapmakers, redrawing post-2000 Census ward and precinct lines right
alongside the ôprofessionalsö. What a novel political calculus! How do
existing and/or proposed NRP neighborhood boundaries fit into this decennial
planning puzzle? Shall the inmates run the asylum?
More to the point, is somebody out there looking for a temporary advantage
by finessing the parochial nature of ward conventions? Fred Markus, Horn
Terrace in the Lyndale Neighborhood, Ward Ten.
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