reNEW Minnesota Campaign Annual Meeting

Mark Dayton, Me, My Son Charles Downey

                                Mark Dayton and Charles Downey

Charles Downey and Paul Thissen

Charles Downey and Orrie Salper

I went to the TakeAction Minnesota annual meeting yesterday. The first thing we did was interview two candidates who will be running against Bachmann in the 6th District. They were Tarryl Clark and Maureen Reed. We endorsed Tarryl Clark with 89% of the vote going to her.

Clark has a great personality and has been working hard for progressive causes for a long time. We felt that she's the one who has the best chance of beating Bachmann.

We felt that Maureen Reed was good but didn't think she excelled in understanding and meeting the vision of reNEW MN.

After the congressional endorsement it was time for a social hour. Attendees were able to mingle, meet the candidates and talk to them. I brought my son Charles to this event. He'll be 31 in April. I introduced him to some of the candidates: John Marty, R. T. Rybak, Paul Thissen and Mark Dayton. I took pictures of him with Thissen and Dayton. I've posted them above. I had posted them on Facebook. They seem to have disappeared. Or someone removed them from their wall. Some candidates don't realize that as soon as you tag your pictures with the names of who is in them, Facebook automatically posts them to that person's wall. The candidate then gets mad that they're there and removes them. Totally. Kaput. That was a great picture of my son, too.

Next came the business meeting. At the end of that the three chosen candidates were announced. It was R. T. Rybak, Paul Thissen and Margaret Anderson Kelliher. I expected that Rybak would be one of the three. Everyone likes him and he's done a good job in Minneapolis. I was glad to see Thissen on the list of three, as well. He was one of the three I had voted for. I expected to see Dayton and Marty be two of the three, as they are the most progressive. A few people said that there was no point in voting for Dayton, as he was going to win in the Primary anyway.

Tomorrow night I'll be convening, and most likely chairing, my precinct caucus. SD53, W-5. Then I'll have to decide if I want to go on with the delegate process or whether I should meet my commitments to Toastmasters. It seems I have two huge conflicts on February 20 and April 23. I keep swaying back and forth as to what I should do. Several candidates want me to caucus for them. It's so hard to choose. My preferred candidate isn't going to have anything to do with the endorsement and is going straight to the Primary. So why should I be a delegate?