FLOOR OPERATION
Winner: Tim Murray. Well-coordinated, well-uniformed and efficient. They did a great job of making sure Tim’s institutional support came through for him, even if they couldn’t pull off a win on the first ballot.
Loser: Deval Patrick. Now, no one needs to freak out – he had a hell of an operation, but all I kept hearing is 65% from his folks. To finish at 57% is an tremendous accomplishment, but they left the door open for Gabrieli and he got in and I think that’s going to hurt in September. To boot, Reilly finished much stronger than any one thought possible.
SPEECH
Winner: Deval Patrick. Quite simply one of the best political speeches given in the last 20 years.
Loser: Tom Reilly. Sounded strained and not particularly passionate. My call on this may have more to do with who he followed and his general style issues, but it was a flat performance.
VIDEO
Winner: Andrea Silbert. People have talked about the production quality, which was excellent, but what it accomplished in a short time was more impressive – a great bio, values message, people she helped and what they thought of her and three things she wants to do. Very effective.
Loser: Tom Reilly. Love Martha Coakley, but given Reilly’s flat style and Martha’s similarly flat style, better use of video could’ve helped a whole lot. What they used was short and not memorable. He’s my loser in Video because he just didn’t take advantage of it.
CLASSIEST MOVE
Winner: Andrea Silbert and Tim Murray. They both had what they came for and they knew it. To second many of Scott in Belmont’s thoughts, I think the agreement they made to let everyone go home early was very classy and the fact, from what I’ve heard, that they made it jointly and in total agreement, is one of the most refreshing things in some time. Kudos to both Andrea and Tim and their campaign teams.
SPECIAL NOTES:
– Don’t tell me that Ted Kennedy’s folks weren’t pissed that the hall was empty for his speech Friday night. Ted deserved to speak on Saturday.
– Voodoo was not a good choice for the Coakley, Cahill et al party. If that’s what Worcester had to offer, better not to party than party in a dump.
– I like the way the balloting was done. I’m not sold on the 15% rule, or even the need for a convention really, but it was easy to be a delegate and vote.
I’d add Bonifaz as a winner. I didn’t vote for him either, but to get 1/4 of the delegates while starting out as a non-entity was pretty impressive.
The decision between Murray and Silbert was a joint decision. As I noted, we had a LOT of time after balloting. When our senate coordinators reported and we in the Murray camp knew we were 40 votes away from the endorsement, we shared the news with the Silbert folks on our way to tell the press. My sense is they were pleased, as they should be by the outcome. After telling the press of our understanding of the vote, the Silbert crew was nice enough to let us in on their thinking about a second ballot. Our feeling was that it would be quite easy to pick up the 40, but that Tim had done quite well, and above our expectation of a hard count.
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Let me put out the Murray spin on the results here: Few people are elected delegates because of the Lt Gov race, save for our individual pockets of supporters. Each candidate has to sway those elected for support of the top of the ticket. This was a Patrick crowd. And yet, Murray got 7 percent fewer votes than Patrick, who had a very impressive convention. We’ll take it.
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Back to the negotiations. We did not know if the party would allow candidates to withdraw, if that was what we decided to do. We did not know if there would be anyone in the hall by the time a second ballot was called. What we did know is that there was no real reason to go to a second recorded ballot, and that both campaigns could join together and show some leadership.
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It took a long time, with a number of staff from both campaigns working together, jointly talking with the party, working out the language of the motion, talking to the press. We did it together, and as Tim walked to the floor before the motion, Andrea came out of her HQ and they congratulated each other. Makes me think we might be able to win in November.
I’m a Deval supporter- as evinced by some of my more venomous comments, but I would say that Tom did give the best speech that I’ve seen him give. He actually had a fire in is belly- perhaps as a result of the fire under his ass! But it does give me some comfort that Tom is capable of coming through in the clutch, and that if he is the eventual nominee he is capable of acquiting himself well. (I actually thought Deval’s speech at last year’s convention was better than this year’s.)
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p>As for the Voodoo Lounge, yeah my feet stuck to the dirty floor, but it was a hell of a good time.
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p>And as for the balloting, I stil think it’s really sketchy that the state committee can be counting some senate districts’ ballots, while other ballots are still out on the floor. And if one was keeping track of the “delinquent ballots”, and then compared who the power brokers from those districts, and the results, it would make one at least ponder the possibilty of an appearance of shenanigans.
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p>And last, I am a Deb Goldberg supporter, but I really didn’t care for her video. She really worked the supermarket angle a little too hard. Kind of like on Saturday Night Live when they have a one-note sketch and just kill it for fifteen minutes. And then do it again next week. And the week after. And as for the whole “Brand New Day” song that Tim Murray used, it sounded like it came from an erectile dysfunction pharmaceutical commercial. (It wasn’t until I saw a posting on BMG that I found out that it was from The Wiz.) Tim, you’re a nice Irish guy- couldn’t you have found an appropriate U2 song? I didn’t really catch any of Silbert’s presentation; I was too busy milling around my district, so I can’t comment positively or negatively on it.
I can assure you in our district all the voting was completed in time. The issue was over a discrepancy (by one vote in the LG race) between the paper teller and the computer assistant teller. None of the campaigns were directly involved. HOWEVER, our tellers should have resolved this at the sergeant at arms table instead of on the stairs near the back of the seating section. At least in my area it was kosher.
My balloting came out pretty damn close to perfect. I had a loud and accomodating teller, and very civil whips. Thank you 2PB!
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If what held up any district was electronic balloting, that electronic teller should have been pulled off the floor. The computer ballot was an onofficial and experimental process. It’s use on the floor on Saturday was mostly to expose the weaknesses so they can be fixed moving forward. When the paper teller was finished the computer teller should have taken at most a minute or two beyond that time. If they couldn’t reach similar results by then, that laptop should have been folded up and brought back to the party with an explanation of what went wrong.
Frankly, I was amazed how well the balloting went in our district. Not to take anything away from other districts, but once we got to balloting the whole operation was as near to seamless as anything involving 100 people can get. Kudos to everyone involved.
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Did anyone bring up the use of bar-code scanners? If they were good for security, why not balloting — was it vote security issues?
2PB….
Regardless of the experimental status of the computer teller, if they had two tellers who got different results, might it have been a misrecorded vote? And if so, which teller was the one who misrecorded it? I think it was good and prudent of them to go through the numbers to make sure the official tally was correct.
but in practice we electronic tellers were given a specific task and a specific explanation as to how to go about it. trust me, as i told a whip in the district i balloted, you did not want to go by my vote. my list was in a different order than the paper teller’s, i could only view 4 people at a time, etc. most of the electronic tellers had it worse than i did. bad lists of those present, even laptops loaded with the wrong district info. the whips were there to make sure votes are taken correctly, among other reasons. the electronic tellers were not. this may be contrary to what you think, or even contrary to common sense. it was not contrary to our explicit instructions from the party.