On Thursday night the Democratic State Committee voted to move the State Convention to July 13. This date is after the special general election for U. S. Senate. Massachusetts Democratic Party Chairman, John Walsh, recommended the change so that Massachusetts Democrats can focus on ensuring that a Democrat is elected to represent us. We need to be talking to voters in this shortened election cycle. When that is over we can give our full attention to the platform.
It was a great State Committee meeting. Speakers included Secretary of State designee John Kerry, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Secretary Bill Galvin, Congressmen and candidates for U. S. Senate, Steve Lynch and Ed Markey. Visitors to the meeting included U. S. Senator designee Mo Cowan, Treasurer Steve Grossman, Auditor Suzanne Bump and the new Suffolk County Sheriff, Steve Tompkins.
It’s official. The date of the State Primary for U. S. Senate is April 30 and the State Election is June 25. Important dates in the election timeline are here.
Events coming up include Congressman Markey’s kick-off and announcement on Saturday. Katherine Clark, Beverley Griffin Dunne, Ayanna Pressley and Ed Coppinger all have events or speaking engagements over the next week or so.
I’d like to make a special mention of the Ashland DTC event coming up a week from Saturday. It’s one of my personal favorites and a fun way to kick-off the caucus season. In addition to the usual great food and wine, guests this year include Congressman Ed Markey, Senator Karen Spilka and Rep. Tom Sannicandro.
I’ll close with a reminder that the official caucus window starts on Saturday. Check out the list on the MDP web site. Go to your caucus. Invite a friend.
Details on the above events are found in the calendar section in Donaghue’s Democratic Dispatch. Subscribe by sending an e-mail to DDemDispatch-subscribe@yahoogroups.com . It is a more or less weekly e-mail newsletter of Democratic events across the state.
The event will be at the Tsongas Arena in Lowell. It is just the date that has changed.
David, thanks for promoting this.
Does anyone else think that moving the convention is a real missed opportunity to have a big show of unity after what is likely to be a divisive convention?
What you said was seriously considered, but it was all balanced against what we accomplished with the ground effort at the corresponding time in 2012 (relative to the election date). Additionally, there is the HUGE investment of staff and volunteer time in organizing for the convention. Since my semi-retirement began I have invested much of my discretionary time in the weeks leading up to the Convention in preparing for the convention. Just the recruitment and briefing of 40 tellers, just one small piece of the event, is a huge commitment of volunteer time on the part of the tellers and the MDP leadership and volunteers. In this extremely compressed election cycle there are a lot of things that would be great to do, but we have to prioritize. And the party platform is an important document and we want to be able to give it our full attention when the time comes.
I had not considered all the preparation, even for a platform convention. When you typically just ‘show up’ like I do, you forget how much work goes in to putting on the event. I can see that the party would think that the opportunity cost would be too high to have the convention before the election.
I wasn’t sure if I should post, but I’m glad I did. Kate
…on much the same lines as sco mentioned. I thought it could be a great rally, followed by hitting the doors in Lowell.