The rumor that appears in Arthur LaRue's message, that there is "a
provision that requires a 2/3 majority to debate or amend proposed rules,"
also surfaced earlier this year. It was not true with respect to the ward
conventions (about which I first heard it), nor is it true with respect to
the City DFL Convention. Each convention is the final authority for its own
rules, which it can adopt by a simple majority, and which are debatable and
amendable on the convention floor.
There was a process of the kind that Mr. LaRue's message mentions,
which the State Central Committee imposed last year on the senate-district
(and county-unit) conventions, for which the State Central Committee adopted
standard rules. There are no such rules for the ward conventions or the
City Convention, and the State Central Committee did not extend its process
to them.
(A footnote: The City DFL Central Committee did propose a set of
standard rules for the ward conventions. I sent the following message in
February in response to a question about whether a ward wanting to depart
from the standard rules must obtain permission from the City Campaign
Committee: "I don't think that the Campaign Committee's approval is
necessary for a change to the rules for a particular ward. The Central
Committee voted that 'each ward convention's rules shall be proposed in the
same form as the standard rules for senate-district conventions that the
State Central Committee adopted for the 2000 election cycle, with [certain
specified] changes.' As [the questioner] suggested, each ward convention is
the final authority for its own rules: it can accept, modify, or reject the
proposed rules, with or without the Campaign Committee's action, and the
Campaign Committee's failure to act on a change for a particular ward (in
fact, even the Campaign Committee's active disapproval for such a change)
would not stop the ward convention from adopting whatever rules suit it.
The ward pre-convention committees that are coming up with changes to the
standard rules are the first step in the ward convention's process, and they
must answer only to the ward convention itself, not to the City Central
Committee or Campaign Committee. To coin a phrase, we're not the boss of
them.")
BRM
Brian Melendez, Chair,
Minneapolis DFL Organization
E-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ph. 612.336.3447
Fax 612.336.3026
-----Original Message-----
From: Arthur LaRue [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 11:21 PM
To: minneapolis issues list
Subject: [Mpls] RE: DFL rules & exclusion
The question of the city convention passing a "6th-district type" resolution
will be interesting, indeed. One of the new (as far as I know) wrinkles
this year was a provision that requires a 2/3 majority to debate or amend
proposed rules. So if you want to ask a question about the rules, you'd
better do a lot of lobbying pre-convention - otherwise you're stuck with
them. (yes, I know that there is the theoretical possibility of 2/3 of the
delegates voting do discuss a rule change, but I'm trying to stay rooted in
reality.)
According to Rick Stafford (personal conversation at the W6 Convention) this
change was mandated by the state CC (please correct me if I'm wrong). He
added that he, and others, fought this rule, but were unsuccessful.
So it would appear that while at least one provision of the rules was
instituted solely for W6 (and, we presume, against the candidacy of Park
Board Commissioner Dean Zimmermann), other changes which tend to stifle
dissent are coming down from the state level.
Arthur LaRue
6-6
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