So on Saturday last, I'm told that while I was rooting for some well-found
candidates in the Sixth Ward screening event at Stonewall DFL, some
incumbent members of the City Council were directing traffic among the
various ward screening events at the Hennepin County Government Center - if
a candidate favored by the incumbent power elite was looking a little
challenged, why send in the troops - pull them out of other meetings and
pack, pack, pack! Then on Monday evening, time for the Mayoral event and
another variation on this theme - was the incumbent's pre-eminence in
jeopardy? Get on the horn and get some warm bodies into that screening room!
This is like cramming for exams - you can puff up a test score, but the
information fades fast after the exam paper leaves your fevered hands. The
critical vote on Monday evening - were all three mayoral candidates (Sharon,
Lisa, and RT) "acceptable"? Answer: No, on a vote of 15 to 14. I'm told it
took several mayoral staffers present and voting and some last-minute phone
calls to get those 15 votes assembled - hardly a balanced decision and where
in this is the leitmotif of the group identity involved? Instead of the GLBT
interest, we see a DFL interest expressed and a remarkably specialized DFL
interest at that.
Stonewall members stayed away in droves and crass manipulation of the
outcome was obvious to the participants - leaving those on the losing side
to consider their options in the run-up to the various DFL conventions and
leaving the city's electorate presumably impacted by a campaign meant to
give the impression of freely given issues-based support when in fact
incumbents and their seasoned supporters engineered outcomes at the expense
of the indentity-based interest group.
Now it's true that those who show up rule the world and a refreshingly
different case in point was the Ninth Ward scene last Saturday where Gary
Schiff supporters buried the "yellow dog" DFLers - good, say I, a seasoned
queer activist gets a vote of confidence from a queer screening process.
Will the Stonewall DFL Board (Stonewall members recommend, but the board
decides) honor that unmistakable message - i.e., Gary had many more sardines
than the other guy - or will there be a new squeeze play at the board level
and an outcome at odds with the preference of the ordinary fishes? We'll
find out this coming Saturday.
I expect to see schools of fish. It's the political season, after all. But
the action was really about trying to force candidates to adhere to the DFL
endorsement outcome in advance and dumping them as "unacceptable" if they
would not commit to this no matter the strength of their issue profiles and
personal attributes. Not a pretty sight and guaranteed to cheapen the value
of the DFL ward conventions in March and the DFL city convention in May. One
may hope that DFL delegates will see past the incumbency protection game,
think about issues, and evaluate candidates on their merits. One may also
expect that determined candidates will see past the stacked DFL decks and
take their shows on the road in the primary season where outcomes can't be
manipulated so readily.
Fred Markus, Horn Terrace, Ward Ten
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