>There has been commentary on this list before about the growing clout of the
>Stonewall caucus within the DFL at the ward level. Peterson seems to me to be
>the first city-wide candidate that the caucus leveraged. It strikes me as a
>virtuoso performance by Scott Dibble and his crew.
>
>Megan or anyone else have any insight or speculation about whether my
>analysis has any basis and where this goes?
>
>Dennis Schapiro
>Linden Hills
As a Stonewall Board member for several years, here are my
thoughts on this.
I would agree that the influence of Stonewall is growing in the city. And
I think it has more to do with changes in Stonewall DFL than with changes
in the city. Mainly, I think Stonewall DFL has "grown up" & become serious
about electing good people! This seemed to happen about the same time we
realized that we could actually make a difference in these elections: Some
examples:
- in the 'old days', we were so happy that candidates would
actually come to our screenings that we endorsed pretty much everyone who
showed up. And any GLBT candidate got endorsed almost automatically. Not
so any more! Our screening meetings have become much more selective about
who they endorse or rate acceptable. This year, even more than other
recent years, there were several GLBT candidates who were not endorsed, and
not even rated as acceptable!
- we've become more serious about 'endorsing good people'. Our
screening groups have extending beyond asking 'will this candidate support
GLBT issues?' to considering things like 'does this candidate have a
serious chance to be elected?' & 'would this candidate do a good job in the
office?'.
- we've become more realistic about our own GLBT community. We
recognize that there's a small group of activists (who do the work of
running the caucus, putting out the newsletter, doing the screenings, etc.)
and a much larger 'interested' group who doesn't want to be activists (they
just join the caucus, read the newsletter, vote for the screened
candidates, etc.). And we don't need to change that (we probably can't!);
we just need to make sure that Stonewall DFL accommodates both groups.
- we've realized that our endorsement alone isn't enough -- we
need to work to make it worthwhile to the endorsed candidate. Thus we
provide our mailing list to candidates, we try to recruit members to work
for the candidate, we send sample ballots to our entire mailing list, we
print sample ballot ads in the community newspapers, and we have an email
list & phone banks to remind people to vote for our endorsed
candidates. (Someday we hope to be able to provide significant financial
contributions, also.)
- Finally, our GLBT community has expanded way beyond Stonewall
DFL. It used to be that all the politically active GLBT'ers were active in
Stonewall -- now they're all over the place -- in neighborhood groups,
community organizations, NRP boards, school PTA's, etc. From this we're
seeing some GLBT people develop into community leaders; people who are not
the political type person (which was most common inside Stonewall DFL).
I think this last item is relevant to the rather unusual situation we have
this year: the most GLBT candidates in years, but without an effort by the
Stonewall DFL to recruit this slate of candidates. (Though we did support
them once they appeared!)
These candidates all have a solid background in their ward &
neighborhood organizations, they emerged as candidates from that
background, and draw their support from it. So we don't have a GLBT slate
running on GLBT issues; we have a bunch of GLBT candidates running on
issues important to their ward/board. To me, this indicates that, at least
within the Minneapolis DFL, we are really starting to accept that diversity
truly is a good thing (and helps to win elections!).
Tim Bonham, 12th Ward, Stonewall DFL Board
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