I had the privilege of participating as a delegate to my first Republican Polk County (Iowa) convention. It was a great experience. We ended up with significantly more people than expected (usually 50% of the elected delegates show up, we had about 70%+) which had a big impact on our start time and completion of some of the work (particularly, electing district committee members). It was a big challenge for the Chairman to maintain order, but thankfully he was able to keep the proceedings under control. We ended up losing our quorum around 6:00, which forced us to accept the remainder of the platform as presented by the Platform Committee, but we did get all of the district committee members elected (it took 5 ballots for one of the committees… too many nominees).
I signed up to attend the State Convention in June as at At-Large delegate. I won’t know if I will actually be able to attend or not, but I figure if I don’t attend as a delegate, I can look at getting a media pass. I’m going to skip the District convention… the process only allowed for one delegate from each precinct, and there was another person who was extremely interested in attending, and I don’t need to do everything this year.
I hope many of you are also participating in the party process from your state. This is part of how we can make a difference. More later!
Oh, and really great news at the convention today… we have 2 Republican candidates preparing to run for US House Iowa District 3 (Leonard Boswell’s district), and 2 Republican candidates preparing to run against Tom Harkin for his US Senate seat! I am really pleased, and from listening to all of their speeches, I think we have some great candidates to do this work!
