First of all, congratulations to all the candidates, all of whom got onto the September ballot — including, by a squeaker, Chris Gabrieli. Congrats especially to Deval Patrick, Tim Murray, and Bill Galvin, the convention-endorsed candidates.
I remember getting home last year from the convention in Lowell — an off-year convention, to be sure — and feeling a bit smug that I got my post done before midnight, thereby scooping (in my mind) the professional journalists, notwithstanding the AP feed.
Well, the pros are blogging now, and the pros are, well, pros. Congrats to the scooptastic Adam Reilly of the Boston Phoenix, who was on fire today. Congrats to Lisa Wangsness, David Dahl and Scott Helman at the Globe for doing excellent work. I’ve said it before: the professional media gets beat up a lot from left and right, but we are all utterly dependent on them. It was a privelege to be with them today.
I think Massachusetts is in for a bit of a shock. If I were to report what happened on the floor today with something that sounded impartial and even-handed … it would not reflect reality. This was Deval’s day, and he and his delegates were in full command. Reilly gave a truly fine speech, tough, compassionate and populist; Gabrieli got in the game (barely), and rejoiced; but the sheer emotional dominance of Patrick’s speeches — and the delegates’ noise — were what one takes away from the proceedings today.
Now, Adam casts a jaundiced eye on some of his rhetorical flourishes; but I have to agree with Kos and Armstrong’s “Crashing the Gate” in thinking that emotions drive the success of campaigns. A lesser talent, a speaker of less commitment would do himself in with such lofty rhetoric; but Deval makes it work, brilliantly. He is simply a remarkable speaker.
In the press gaggle (I’ll have audio tomorrow), I asked Patrick how he would appeal to moderates. His answer was predictable — not going to change anything, keep doing what we’re doing — but I immediately regretted the question. For the primary and general elections, the real issue is how Patrick reaches beyond the labor-n’-liberal activists that tend to be delegates to conventions. With the media campaign about to start in earnest, we’ll find out soon enough.
I don’t think you ever reported the final numbers for the Secretary’s race: Bonifaz got 29.3%! Coming into the convention with everyone (including me) cautiously optimistic about getting 15%, but not quite sure… and leaving with twice that, was the biggest surprise of the convention for me.
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I’ve said before that I was confident Reilly would get on the ballot, but thought Gabrieli could go either way, and it turns out Reilly was safe and Gabrieli was right on the edge. Tim Murray did better than I expected on the first ballot, but not by enough to be a huge surprise. But if you’d told me Bonifaz would get more votes than Tom Reilly, more votes than Deb Goldberg, more votes than Andrea Silbert, I would’ve said, “I wish!”
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I feel almost as bowled over as I felt on February 4th when I found out Deval Patrick had beaten Tom Reilly in the caucuses.
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I’ll admit it was an interesting day, at least as interesting a day can get when four hours of it is spent waiting for other people to count things.
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The thing that really seemed odd was on the subject of correlations in votes for governor and lt. governor. It was nice of them to feed the results out by district, partially I think to relieve the tedium.
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I guess I expected to see a lot of Silbert/Patrick correlation, but to me it didn’t seem that way. Rather, the better Patrick did, the better it seemed Tim Murray did (and not just in Worcester). Big Murray towns had I’d say some 20% for Reilly, but were usually dominated by Patrick. Conversely, a strong performance by Silbert seemed to hold up more as an indicator that Reilly would do better in that district.
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I personally voted for Reilly/Silbert and I think I may not have been the only one. I will say that I think she complements Reilly and Patrick quite well and would be a great part of the ticket. (Nothing against Gabrieli, but I see Murray as his best match, otherwise it’s rather strong on business as opposed to political experience).
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In an unrelated note, my nominations for convention moments:
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Most Surprising: John Kerry shows up in front of thousands of people and a live microphone…and doesn’t say a word.
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Most Ego-nourishing: Sen. McGovern told us how smart we were even in the old days.
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Most Confusing: Any time spent relying on the Call to Convention for driving directions.
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Most Disappointing: Patrick delegates booing the fact that voters will have the option of Chris Gabrieli this September.
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Most Regettable: Tim Cahill and Martha Coakley talking to a mostly empty hall.
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Most Harmonious: The LaRouche choir was actually very good — not sure what they were signing, but it sounded great.
One that made me most want to buy someone a beer — Silbert agreeing to forgo the second ballot. Many blessings on her for that alone.
…. with delegates on that one alone. đŸ˜€
Most Shocking: George McGovern’s reference to intercourse with sheep and presidential “diddling” with interns. Too funny.
Probably the best couple of lines of the Convention; although I did like Phil Johnston’s deadpan “I appreciate your passion,” following Deval’s speech on Saturday. The man sounds like he’s never had a passionate moment in his life!
Most Harmonious: The LaRouche choir was actually very good — not sure what they were signing, but it sounded great.
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Just to be clear, is this a reference to the laRouche crew’s tendency to preach to their own (very small) choir? Or was there actually a choir of Lyndon Larouche followers? The latter possibility is truly terrifying.
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Or is this a different LaRouche? I mean, Lyndon’s crew doesn’t have any delegates, do they? They don’t even run any MA cndidates, do they??
No, they were standing on the streetcorner, singing. They were pretty good: us signholders were joking about the audition process to becoming a LaRouche supporter.
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One girl did sneak in and took over a table in the convention center. She tried to corner me but I saw what she was holding and walked away. When I went back, she was gone so i assume she was kicked out. I have no idea how she got past all the security, though…
I’m not sure LaRouche runs any candidates…they hand out fliers and disrupt Democratic events.
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One of my favorite LaRouche moments of all time was in early 2004 when he said that he and Kerry were the only “real Democrats” in the race. I still have no idea what his criteria was…height?
I had a fun one when I was walking into the Kennedy School a few months ago (I’m not a student there, but I applied) and there were LaRouchies at the door. One asked me if I wanted to fight Dick Cheney or some such thing; as I walked by, I replied, “Not with LaRouche.” He pursued, asking why, and I said that I didn’t have time to talk. He kept on, asking if I was scared of a debate. I was now at the door to the building, and as I opened it, I replied that I had better thing to do with my time than debate him. he didn’t like that much.
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It’s a brilliant strategy, though a decptive one. Grab people with something general (like dislike of Cheney), and then if they don’t engage, treat them as if they oppose free and open debate. I’d guess that many take the bait.
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Amusing as they are, though, LaRouche isn’t funny. I mean, we are talking about a guy who wrote of homophobic lynch-mobs, “In that case, the lynch-mobs might be seen by later generationsĂ¢Â€Â™ historians, as the only political force which acted to save the human species from extinction.” Evil? Yes. Funny? No.
A bit over a week ago I posted a poll asking BMGers to predict Patrick’s percentage of the delegate vote. You nailed it, people: “55-60%” was the plurality pick, and the other responses pretty much formed a bell-shaped curve around this favored — and correct — choice.
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Our predicted results are here:
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http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/pollResults.do?diaryId=2307
Do we have our finger on the pulse, or what?
Overall, I think the Convention went well. I think the downtime could have been better spent, especially leaving the so-called uncontroversial changes to a vote at the eleventh hour of the emptying hall.
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As far as the voting went, I (from 1WO) voted Patrick/Murray/Bonifaz. I think Patrick’s speeches, both of them, were terrific, further cementing the notion he is a natural orator with an ability to inspire and motivate. People around me down on the floor were absolutely electrified by him–all good things moving forward with the hard work. The icing on the cake, in a rather organizational sense, was the distribution of community networking envelopes with each delegate’s democratic and unenrolled neighbors listed for easy reference. The Patrick campaign has its act together like no other.
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Murray did a fine job, too, which helped sway some votes in other districts to his side. He has a fresh-faced, boyish appeal that should not be discounted. He also has deep roots and connections in this city, which will pay off when it’s time to dig into the really hard work.
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Lastly, Bonifaz’s surprisingly strong showing was heartening to see. There weren’t many Bonifaz supporters in my district (Harlee Chandler seemed surprised there were any at all), but as I listened to the vote tallies, there’s strong support in other districts, which should give his campaign something to build on.
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As I reflect on the past few days, I think back to 13 months ago when Deval Patrick came to the home of one of our town committee members, a longtime veteran campaign worker, who’d met Patrick on a plane going to Florida. In a small living room, Patrick sat with us, plumbed our thoughts, feelings, and opinions on a variety of issues and barely said much of anything at all. He said he was there primarily to listen and bounce ideas off of “regular” people. The ten of us came away believing we’d found our guy, that if we could only get people to listen to him, they’d see what we see. Looks like we’re on the right track.
What I found most interesting sitting in that section the was how local reps. Vin Pedone and Bob Spellane twisted arms like I have never seen before to get people behind Gabrieli. It worked on a couple people but Deval’s speach also changed a couple minds as well.
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Why Pedone and Spellane jumped on the Gabrieli bandwagon I will never understand – although knowing DiMasi was behind it makes some sense…I think this move hurts them BOTH in the long run – especially Spellane when he runs for Chandler’s senate seat (someday) against Jim Leary (who backed Deval).
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Most interesting fact from our 1WO section was this – our split of vote for governor was EXACTLY the same as the entire convention. I had us at 15.4 for Gabrieli as soon as our section voting was over…
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1WO – the new bellweather – “As 1WO goes – so goes the state.”
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đŸ™‚
the bellweather factor. Interesting.
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I agree on Pedone and Spellane. They must be promised jobs if Gabrieli get elected or something. I heard from some other delegates in his district that Spellane was very aggressive in opposing Patrick at the caucuses in February and in supporting Gabrieli since he jumped in. These folks felt bullied. Bizarre.
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In Chandler’s defense, I think she knew how our delegation would go, so she never pressured any of us in Holden. She was, however, quite surprised we all went for Bonifaz with one exception–and that vote was made in error.
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Cynthia
How is it possible to cast a vote in error at the convention?
We hadn’t decided on a candidate going in. The delegate was not with us when we finally discussed the Galvin/Bonifaz issue and we couldn’t find him to discuss it when the voting started because he was a floor worker for the Murray campaign. (He was not sitting with us when we were voting or listening carefully to the polling.) Stuff happens. He considers his vote an error.
I would have been for Bonifaz as well except for the fact that the woman delegate from my town’s husband was working for Galvin as an attorney on the floor (Used to work for him in Boston as well)….
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But I must tell you – when you did your vote (which was about the 4th or 5th vote I think…well I was right in front of Harriette and she swung her head so fast to see who that was as did my fellow town delegate – and I just smiled to myself and knew 1/ that must be Cynthia and 2/ Bonifaz is going to have a good day.
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đŸ™‚
you rock.
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We’re going to planning our summer party this Saturday at our meeting in Holden at 9 am at Town Hall if you’re up and want to come down for some coffee and convention deconstruction. We often have people from other communities come to our meetings.
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Harlee didn’t recognize me because I cut my hair. She did come on down to speak with me after, though, once she realized who I was.
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Let’s plan on a multitown get-together in the late summer/early fall. We throw great parties……….
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Cynthia
I was speaking with a member of the DTC in West Boylston as well about the possibilty of getting our 3 DTCs together maybe others in the 1WO as well? – Similar maybe to what Kate Donaghue does with her monthly group.
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I’m ALL up for that! The more the merrier.
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I can not do it this Saturday however – will be in NY taking a (gasp) cooking class!
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BTW – haircut looked awesome! đŸ™‚ I should have tracked you down to talk afterwards. Maybe we could send Harley to your stylist?
Enjoy the cooking class! (Maybe you should be tapped to man the grill this summer??) Kate, too, would be glad to join us if she’s free as she’s always one to foster more collegeal ties.
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I will put the multi-town gig on the agenda for us this Saturday and get back to you with the results.
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Thanks, too, for the compliments on the ‘do. I’m not hard to find in a crowd now. đŸ˜‰
I also was a delegate last year, when Deval Patrick first burst onto my personal radar screen. He impressed me then. To say that he is a “remarkable speaker” is to sell him short. Yesterday I thought that he was easily the best speaker of the convention. And considering that he followed “The Lion of the Senate”, and the “President of Massachusetts and the District of Columbia”, Well, I think that really says something.
Is there a copy of the Debbie Does Delegates grocery store video? I’d be surprised if her staff put it on her website since it got such poor reviews, but I’d love me an electronic copy. Anyone?