Notes from Pre Convention Meeting, the Convention and Candidates

Written by: Katherine Wallace on Jul 24, 2006 12:44 AM EDT

What has PDS been up to in the recent past?

The Democratic State Convention was held in Worcester June 2 & 3 and many PDS members attended as delegates, alternates or volunteers. To prep for the Convention, we turned our regular monthly meeting on May 23rd into our "Convention Edition".

1) Convention and Delegate Training
All of the PDS delegates were committed to Deval Patrick for Governor. The first part of the meeting was devoted to Convention and Delegate Training. We talked about the credentials, the delegate guide, rules and rules changes, voting procedures, rumors, when to be where, what to wear. In addition to Katie we had guests Carlene Campbell and Lauren Leeman demystifying the convention process and answering questions. Carlene and Lauren were the Deval Patrick floor whips for our 2nd Middlesex district.

2) Secretary of the Commonwealth
Stephanie Sanchez, then John Bonifaz' campaign manager, now the campaigns Senior Strategist spoke about his candidacy.

3) Lt. Governor Candidates
Two of the Candidates for Lt. Governor visited our meeting to talk about their candidacy and answer questions from our members. Our Secretary Paula Stuart took the following notes about the two Candidates as they spoke.

Lt. Governor Candidate Andrea Silbert:

Andrea Silbert was introduced. Katie mentioned that both State Rep Denise Provost and State Senator Pat Jehlen have endorsed Andrea.

Andrea introduced herself as a working mother of three. Education and other issues related to children are important reasons for her to run. She noted that she had just signed up her first child for kindergarten today. She and husband concerned that her children may not get the same education they got.

She noted that Massachusetts has one of highest rates of childhood asthma in the state.

Why Lieutenant Governor? She's "bringing a job description with her.

She founded and runs the Center for Women and Enterprise, which has provided small business training and assistance with finding venture capital for new business ideas - among their success stories is Zip Cars...

How do we get more money back from Washington? Need to work on regional priorities with other New England states.

Andrea said she started out working on Wall Street, and she wanted to be "part of the solution" Lived in Brazil and Costa Rica and saw the worst of the gap between rich and poor. This is what our country does not want to become, she said. She wants to make Massachusetts the first state in the union to end hunger and homelessness and believes that is possible.

Note the following Q&A's are given as samples, and are not word-for-word transcription of either the questions or the answers. (Some of the questions, and some of the answers, were quite long). These excerpts are intended to convey the flavor of the exchange only.

Bill Bennett: Asked for her thoughts on the Lottery and having money come back to cities and towns.
Answer "That's where it should go"

Ron Newman asked: "Do you support Cape Wind?"
Answer: "Yes," She noted that she also supported Regional Green House Gas amendment.

Ofer asked: "You seemed to support MCAS as a graduation requirement...?"
Answer: "No. It is part of what you look at, but shouldn't be sole criteria"

Fred Berman asked: "would you support elimination of mandatory sentences."
Answer: "Yes...but we need more detox beds, and we need more prevention."

Marty Martinez asked: "How would you influence the Democratic Party structure?"
Answer: "I lead by example."

Mellissa McWhinney asked: "Do you support a raise in the minimum wage?"
Answer: "Yes, absolutely."

Andrea thanked PDS for the opportunity to talk with us and asked for delegates to consider supporting her at the convention.

Lt. Governor Candidate Deborah Goldberg:

Lt. Gov Candidate Deb Goldberg thanked the group for the opportunity to meet with us and then gave a brief introduction of her qualifications and background. She said she's been politically active for her whole life. Ran for town meeting in Brookline in 1997 and became a Selectman in 1998, serving as Chairman 2002 to 2004. She talked about how her experiences in Town government - such as budgeting and homeland security issues - were good training."

She said she's running for LG because we have an obligation to take stands that are ethical and stand up. She said, as an example, that she supported the Mayor of New Bedford in issuing diplomas to those who fail MCAS but meet all other requirements for graduation...

Note the following Q&A's are given as samples, and are not word-for-word transcription of either the questions or the answers. (Some of the questions, and some of the answers, were quite long). These excerpts are intended to convey the flavor of the exchange only.

Bill Bennett asked "How do you feel about taxes?"
Answer: "I worked against the tax rollback."

Ron Newman asked: "What do you see as the role of the Lt. Governor?"
Answer: "Among the most important is to work on appointing the right judges - overseeing the Governors Council - Interfacing with local communities."

Greg asked: "What about campaign reform, public financing, fair elections, etc. ???"
Answer: "We need access to media"

Ellin Reisner asked: "How do we finance public transportation?
Answer: "MassDevelopment has funding to invest in transportation projects. They want to invest in these types of deals. There are alternative financing options she'd like to work on."

(Note that Ms. Goldberg's presentation was considerably longer than the other candidate and left less time for questions).

4) MassScorecard.org
Jesse Gordon and the Scorecard Committee have been working on updating the Scorecard with new votes. In May we discussed if we should we spend time between then and the convention to do a handout for the convention. Pros and Cons were discussed. Concerns were largely related to having time to vet the questions to be listed and put together something we could be proud of in such a short amount of time. Supporters, including Marty and Katie pointed out that this is the issue PDS is known for, and we can have access to an exhibition table so it will be an informational effort and will serve to keep the issue before active members of the Party. We agreed that i t was best to go forward. Jesse and Company put together the materials and we distributed them at the convention. Since then the Scorecard now has posted the new votes for the legislature online live at www.MassScorecard.org.

5) Announcements & Issues
a) Helen Corrigan announced the Mass Victory 06 Campaign which will work to make sure that we elect a Democrat as Governor in November. We'll hear more details about this campaign in July.
b) We voted to go forward with an endorsement process for Secretary of the Commonwealth (in June) and Lt. Governor (in July)
c) We voted to contribute $40 to the cost of the table at the convention to be sponsored by DFA, CPPAX, PDS, PDC etc. The group voted unanimously to do so. At the Convention we had new sample Scorecard vote flyers as well as a new press release and FAQ which we distributed from the table and on the floor.
d) We voted to approve the request of Melissa McWhinney for PDS to co sponsor a legal observers training program. (Not yet scheduled)
e) Issues Chair Fred Berman announced that the Board of Alderman would be considering and holding hearings on a proposed new Condo Ordinance. The Ordinance is still under review and we will feature an educational session on the proposal at our July meeting.
f) Lawrence Paollela announced he had filed a FOIA request revealed with the city that revealed $600K had been spent to date supporting bad legislation at Assembly Square.

6) The Convention!
I had a fun time at the convention. It was great to be there with so many PDS members and friends. We had over 40 from Somerville alone! On Friday night Senator and 1972 Presidential Candidate George McGovern addressed the convention and later he was sitting right next to our delegation. I was excited to be able to say hello to him because in 1972 as a young girl I stayed up every night until about 4 am watching the Democratic Convention on TV. Yes, I had a few political junkies in my family too. I was glued to the set. So you can see that I loved Democratic Conventions from an early age. The speeches, the vote counting, I can't get enough.

We had a great location on the floor of the convention and we all met just about everyone who is anyone in Democratic politics.

In Pat Jehlen's Second Middlesex District (which for purposes of the convention seating included all of Somerville and Medford) there were 130 delegates present and the votes from Somerville and Medford were:

Governor 129 votes cast
Patrick - 90
Reilly - 32
Gabrielli - 7

Lt. Governor 124 votes cast:
Murray - 49
Silbert - 46
Goldberg 29

Secretary of Commonwealth 130 votes cast
Galvin - 84
Bonifaz - 46

There were several people who passed on voting for Lt. Gov and 1 person who Only voted for Galvin, not Gov. or Lt. Gov.

Somerville had 50 elected, 19 ex-officio and 12 add on delegates for a total of 81 eligible delegates but not all of them attended. Of these it was divided about evenly between PDS people and the Mayor's people with a few unknown add on folks. The rest of the delegation was from Medford.

Almost all of the Somerville delegates voted for Patrick with the exception of Jack Connolly and Alderman Dennis Sullivan who voted for Gabrielli. A couple of the add-on delegates voted for Reilly and at least one voted for Gabrielli. The Mayor, our State Legislative Delegation, our Congressman and PDS had all endorsed Deval Patrick early.

For Lt. Gov in Somerville virtually all of the Mayor's people including the Mayor voted for Murray and virtually all of the PDS people voted for Silbert with a few voting for Goldberg.

For Secretary in Somerville all of the Mayor's people voted for Galvin and about 90% of the PDS people voted for Bonifaz. Our Mayor, our State Legislative Delegation and our Congressman all voted for Galvin.

In Medford, Reilly had won a majority of the Caucus delegates and for Lt. Gov it seemed split between Murray and Goldberg with a lesser amount for Silbert. For Secretary, Galvin got most of the votes from Medford, but there were some Bonifaz voters.

Most Mayors seemed to be voting for their fellow Mayor Murray and asking their people to vote the same.

The Percentage Totals for the entire Convention Vote which required 51% for endorsement and 15% to get a spot on the September Primary Ballot were:

Governor
Patrick - 57.98%
Reilly - 26.66%
Gabrielli - 15.36%

Lt. Governor:
Murray - 49.02%
Silbert - 28.94%
Goldberg - 22.04%

Secretary of Commonwealth
Galvin - 70.70%
Bonifaz - 29.3%

The roar for Deval Patrick when he won the endorsement was huge. It was so awesome to see so much support. Bonifaz surprised a lot of people by getting twice the percentage he needed to get on the ballot. The Lt. Gov candidates agreed to allow a voice vote for the second ballot and Murray was declared the endorsed candidate of the convention.

Tags:
Location: Somerville, MA 02144