Personally, that would be a point I'd emphasize. ------ List Manager wrote:
> Lots of delegates...and delay. > > http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/5404118.html
Doug Grow did the DFL a big disservice with his inaccurate and ignorant column on the DFL convention. He focused on the problems of an unexpectedly large crowd, and missed the bigger story of what such a large crowd meant.
One can define ignorance as a lack of knowledge about something, and a knowledge that could have been acquired. Grow was completely ignorant of the kind of effort it takes to plan and run a large meeting of people, especially when the number of attendees can vary between a few and a few thousand.
One can also define wisdom as knowing what one does not know. Grow was likewise unwise to write about something he was ignorant of, without contacting the people who knew something about it to gain some knowledge.
As a delegate who attended 3 ward conventions, as a volunteer member of the arrangements committee that worked on the DFL convention and as a delegate who was at the convention from 9:30am until just before midnight, I can find lots of things to criticize and complain about. But not only is my viewpoint more informed than Doug Grow's -- having been inside the planning of it -- but my criticisms are not remotely similar to his.
Let's look at some facts.
The 2001 DFL city convention, where the mayoral race was also hotly contested, had a turn out of 909 delegates and 99 alternates.
The previous high water mark for attendees was about 950 delegates.
Saturday's convention had 1134 seats on the floor, a limit imposed by the fire marshal (we actually rented 1250 chairs).
Worse, Augsburg and the fire marshal could not get us an exact number until Friday, so seating plans had to be drawn up in just a few hours.
Both mayoral campaigns wanted delegates seated by precinct, so they could work them. Likewise, this is how it was done in 2001. Thus, the rules committee made this part of the rules. Imagine how easy it is to arrange an unknown number of delegates into 13 wards and 130 precincts laid out on top of 1134 chairs. Go ahead and try it, and see how fun it is. See if you can make everybody (or even most people) happy.
Some delegates may have noticed that the chairs were tie-wrapped together. That's because the layout of chairs (number and aisles) had to be approved by the fire marshal, and we were not allowed to change the chair configuration.
In reality, we had roughly twice as many delegates show up as have ever shown up at a convention. I've seen various numbers from 1850 to 2000 delegates. It's a verified fact that 1869 delegates were on the floor and voted in the first mayoral ballot.
At some point in the past, the DFL rented a larger hall than Melby Hall. It also went into debt that took 7 years to pay off -- in other words, it was a financial disaster.
The city DFL party is not a huge money-making machine. Paying for chair rental and hall rental is expensive, and the only money they have to spend is money they get in donations and whatever small margin they make on the small fees they charge for things like table rental at the convention, etc. Sure, it would be nice to have room for all 3,333 delegates and alternates, but that costs real money, and we know that all of them will not show up.
The hard question is: how do you calculate how many will show up? And this is where Grow gets it all wrong. He simply blames the organizers for not figuring it out, without even considering the fact that it's an impossible task. Without considering things like the following (which we did consider):
* How does the weather affect the turn out? What will the weather be?
* Fishing opener means a lower turn out. We think.
* Hotly contested mayoral race means a bigger turn out. Pretty sure, but so was 2001.
* Hotly contested ward 2 and ward 8 races, which swelled the ranks of those wards' delegates, probably means a greater proportion of those delegates are interested in their ward races than in other wards, and probably means fewer of them, percentage wise, will show up at the city convention. We think.
* We had 909 delegates last convention. We have 1134 chairs. That's about 25% more chairs than delegates at the last convention. Will it be enough?
* We spent too much money and went into debt by renting a venue that was too large. Can we avoid that?
Like Carol Becker, we had spreadsheets, and we knew how to use them. We did all kinds of statistical analysis on delegate counts and did the best we could to figure out how many would show up.
In truth, I personally thought we were not going to have enough room. I thought we might have as many as 1200 or even the incredible number of 1500, which would have been a roughly 50% turn out. Instead, we blew those numbers clear out of the water.
So, what would you have done?
I want to thank Linda Higgins for taking on the greatly unpopular task of rearranging the seating. She did a great job.
We knew the day before that we had about 900 to 1000 seats in the bleachers. We could have intentionally put some of the wards in the bleachers so we did not have to move people around. Can you imagine the SCREAMS of discontent if some delegates arrived and found themselves seated in the bleachers? Which campaign would have complained first that its delegates were being unfairly treated and discriminated against? It was a no win situation.
What I found most appalling, however, has nothing to do with the size of the crowd or the seating. It was the delegates and campaigners themselves. It was a tough situation and anyone with half an ounce of common sense would have known that. Considerate delegates did their best to make the best of a crowded situation. Yet we had an incredible number of inconsiderate people who made the situation worse.
We had people talking and making noise when people were speaking to the convention as a whole, making it hard to hear.
We had people clogging the aisles and obstructing sight lines.
We had people who somehow did not feel the rules of the convention applied to them, and felt they could shout into microphones in inappropriate ways and would not stop when told they were out of order. Several such people actually got booed down by the audience as a whole.
We had people who believed it was more important to get their candidate endorsed via parliamentary maneuvers and delay tactics, rather than let the will of the delegates be known. This behavior was particularly egregious in the mayoral race, and was detrimental to other races. Unfortunately it had the biggest side effect in the park district races.
In Park District 6, for example, there were approximately 362 delegates present in the early evening. By the time the district conventions were convened around 10:30pm, that number had dwindled to 90. So now 25% of the 50% of the delegates who showed up were deciding for all 10,000 to 15,000 DFL voters in the district who would be endorsed. This makes sense how?
Doug Grow's column did a big disservice to DFL citizens and organizers. His complaints amount to the same as my criticizing him for having a wet basement after a 100-year rainfall.
P.S.
Yes, we did have a coffee vendor lined up as of Friday night. They backed out. They lost a lot of business by doing so. More food vendors would have been nice, but anyone who saw the crowd in the lobby would realize there was little room for another such vendor. Moreover, lining up several contingent vendors, since Marriott has a contract with Augsburg to be the exclusive food vendor, would be a challenge. Marriott declined at the last moment, so it was darn nice that Davannis was willing to do it contingent upon Marriott backing out.
P.P.S.
This was my first city-wide convention. The one thing that will most deter me from showing up again is the sheer inconsiderate behavior of a small number of delegates and campaigners -- not the crowds, not the long hours, etc. I agree with Barry Clegg; it's time to bring this process into the 21st century.
-- Chris Johnson Fulton
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