The special endorsement meeting (July 18th)

Written by: Amy Buttery on Jul 28, 2006 10:58 PM EDT

I felt someone should record for members what happened at this meeting. We met with the purpose of deciding who we wanted to endorse in two tight and difficult State House races, the 68th and 69th. Seeking endorsement in the 68th were Mary Lindemann, who spoke at our regular July meeting, and Mark Meadows, who spoke at this meeting (the other dem candidate, Jeff Abood, didn't contact us.) Seeking our endorsement in the 69th were Melissa Sue Robinson, who spoke on her own behalf, and Jerry Hollister and Joan Bauer, both of whom had their campaign managers speak at the meeting. All were received with lively and civil discussion, I thought.

After those we were discussing left the room, there were only 8 voting members present, and we still hadn't settled on the process we'd use--mostly because we didn't have an endorsement committee that was supposed to meet and work this stuff out before this point. We discussed whether to endorse only one, more than one, or no candidates in contested primaries where several had sought endorsement and there was no clear reason to exclude one based on their submissions. THe point was raised that many candidates would prefer NO endorsement (remaining neutral) over an endorsement of two candidates. And considering precedent or tradition--most groups don't do multiple endorsements in a race. We decided (I think) to endorse one candidate if that candidate got a clear majority.

Because there were only 8 members voting, the notion was proposed that a candidate ought to have a supermajority. A 5-3 split would be a tenuous "win" and might result in some disgruntlement, considering how small a quorum we had. We decided that we'd endorse a candidate who got 6 of our 8 votes.

Finally, we voted and discovered that we were quite split among the candidates. It was both frustrating and inspiring, somehow, to see that each candidate had strong support in the group --frustrating because it felt like we accomplished nothing by remaining neutral, but inspiring because we have such decent candidates in these two races that, it seemed, most of us could feel fairly good about any of these candidates winning.

In any case, we realized the importance of thinking long and hard about the whole endorsement process and having a procedure well in place and agreed upon long before this comes up again in 08. Whew! Glad it's over.

OF COURSE, for the Nov election, we'll endorse whichever dem candidate wins the primary, provided it's one who has already sought our endorsement.

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Location: Lansing, MI 48864