Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

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  1. Okay, that is seriously one of the least comprehensible sets of instructions I’ve ever seen. Let me see if I have this correct…

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    p>Half the delegates (61 out of 121) are chosen among the state’s 10 congressional districts.

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    p>The delegates are allocated based on the proportion of votes candidates get in the primary (with a 15% threshhold to get any delegates at all).

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    p>Then, in order to “run” for district delegate you fill out a form (what form?) designating your stated or uncommitted presidential candidate preference.

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    p>Then the list of delegate candidates is given to the respective presidential campaigns, who gets approval over who can stay in the running.

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    p>After that, there are caucuses within the congressional district, broken down by presidential candidate. At that caucus, the voters elect their presidential candidate’s delegates.

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    p>In addition to those 61…

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    p>There are 26 “unpledged” delegates who are automatically in because they are high-ranking elected officials and party members.

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    p>There are 2 unpledged add-on delegates.

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    p>There are 12 pledged party leader and elected official delegates.

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    p>And then there are 20 at-large delegates, all chosen at one big meeting, proportionally determined by primary results.

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    p>Does anyone have any experience with this process that they’d like to share? Do a ton of people put themselves in for consideration? Is attendance at the district caucuses huge or will a dozen friends be enough to get you elected? Each congressional district elects about 6 people, so I would imagine competition is rather tough.

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    p>And of course the deadline question is pretty important as well. Hopefully someone from the state party can answer that one for us.  

    • First of all, I don’t expect the dates to move, although I’m not certain. And the forms will be available from the state party, presumably online.

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      p>I participated in the process in the 6th CD and at the state committee level.

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      p>In the 6th CD (Tierney’s seat on the North Shore), we were allocated one woman delegate for Edwards and the rest for Kerry (offhand I think it was 3 men, 2 women, or it could have been 3 and 3).

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      p>The Edwards delegate was more or less decided as a setup. Longtime Demcratic activist Ann Sheinwald of Rockport was the campaign’s choice for delegate, so the caucus was held in Rockport before the town meeting on that day, so my understanding is that it was pretty much a pro-forma process.

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      p>The Kerry folks, several hundred strong, met at the Peabody High School auditorium. Both the men’s and women’s seats were contested by folks who were well-known in Democratic politics on the North Shore and who had been heavily involved in the Kerry campaign. Their speeches to the gathering read like a travelogue of “where I’ve been with John Kerry.” I don’t think the campaign really intervened in these races, as they were highly competitive (although very friendly).

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      p>The state committee elects the rest of the delegates: 20 statewide at-large, 12 statewide party leaders, and 2 “unpledged” party leaders. Because the race was over in May, the Kerry and Edwards camps had made a deal to let the campaigns reward the home state workers with the delegates. So the “Edwards” delegates were really Kerry supporters.

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      p>The other thing about the 20 at-large is that they have to be used to balance the sex mix in the delegation and reflect affirmative action targets. Since the ex officio delegates included our (then) all-male congressional delegation, women had to be elected to balance out the delegation. (In other words, for every Congressman and Senator, there had to be a woman at-large).

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      p>In any case, the campaign had put forward a slate of delegates from among the people who had submitted their names and although other people were free to run, it was pretty well understood that the state committee members would vote for the people who the Kerry campaign wanted. The   list was pretty much a who’s who of Democrats from around the state.

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      p>I would expect the process to be basically the same this time around. With the early primary date, I would expect that the first three finishers in Massachusetts would get delegates. That means separate meetings in each congressional district for each campaign. You can expect that each caucus will be set up to the advantage of the local campaign’s favorite would-be delegates (as in the case of the Rockport Edwards caucus in 2004), and that the core of the attendees would be volunteers from the campaigns who would at least have some idea of who the most deserving supporters are.

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      p>Bottom line: if you want to win a spot, you had better be very well known within your campaign, and be prepared to bring a lot of people who will vote for you to the caucus.

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  2. At the DSC meeting, we were told that if the primary date changes, the filing deadlines and caucus dates will all change.  

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