Saturday, June 2, 2018

The Duluth event of 2018





"In any event, it is off to the races once again. Lets hope all the gremlins which plagued us last night went down to Rochester to plague the Democrats instead." 


Yesterday, the 2018 MNGOP Convention was called to order. Unlike two years ago when the convention was also held in Duluth, the weather was anything but "June like". In fact, when my wife and I come up here in November for the "Gales of November", the weather is quite often warmer than this the weekend. Go figure. In any event, the convention kicked-off in a grand and flashy manner.

It was a tough slog yesterday. No, I am not going to put lipstick on this pig. For a retired sailor who spent 21 years in the Navy's "hurry up and wait" environment, this was worse by far. Lots and lots and lots of wasted time. The new gee whiz technology which was ordered to help speed the voting up, was a throw back to the Pong days in video stores. To add insult to injury, it did not work. So after wasting hours futzing with this thing, the management team threw in the towel and resorted to paper ballots.

The folding chairs were plenty roomy enough if you were a Munchkin from the Wizard of Oz. In any event, the only two items of importance to dispense with last night were the endorsement of the two Senate positions. Should have been easy peasy. Nope. Due to the entropy and dysfunction of the voting process, the final endorsement did not happen until after 10. The savior of the evening was CD 8 candidate Pete Stauber, who opened his hospitality room up and offered free beer. Best tasting beer I have had in years.

Today the weather promised to be just like yesterday, only wet too boot. We some easy endorsements to make (hopefully) by positions where there is only one candidate. The big shebang will come next - Governor. The three candidates are there, locked and loaded. They will each fight like hell until the last ballot is cast. Once the 60% is reached by one candidate, each has pledged to hop on the winner's team and get ready to beat the hell out of any un-endorsed candidate in the August 14th primary. Based on our success Friday night, we might not finish until Sunday morning sometime.

In any event, it is off to the races once again. Lets hope all the gremlins which plagued us last night went down to Rochester to plague the Democrats instead. 

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