urbanMSP

If there's even a whiff of this being true, Dai should not drop out. If something like this happened we deserve to know.

Does it matter? I mean, if he solicits a quid pro quo, does it matter that someone was trying to get him to?

As for the Thune spin, I thought the story was that his staffer asked the lobbyist for a campaign donation, and that lobbyists are not supposed to give campaign donations. Not sure how what Thune said deals with that.

That said, I purposely do not follow St Paul political news all that closely, so maybe I'm wrong.

My understanding is that the lobbyist/whatever asked for a meeting though the campaign staff, not the city council staff, and so Thune is saying that it's understandable that Dai might think a request for a donation was appropriate. Not saying he made such a request (he denies it AFAIK and fired the staffer who did) but that's what I think Thune is saying.

I'm not necessarily saying Dai has no fault here, but if he was set up, voters deserve to know so they can make an informed decision.

I think it's possible that Dai did request a donation, but not as part of a quid pro quo.

If he went into the meeting thinking it was about campaign fundraising, while the lobbyist and her clients were there to talk about something coming before the council, then there was probably talking past eachother, confusion, arguing, etc. "I need resources to spread my message" seems like the kind of thing you'd say to try and clarify the purpose of the meeting, what he wanted out of it, ect. It feels like there could be some lying by omission going on, because there's a lot we don't know about how the meeting played out.

Given the way he's angrily talked about the meeting as a bait-and-switch (and the lobbyist's statements, and that it was arranged through campaign staff), that's how I picture it went down. Firing his campaign manager, by comparison, was a rather clear choice, because even if she didn't phrase it exactly as she meant to, offering to potentially "rethink" their position in exchange for a donation is a clear solicitation of a bribe.

I find the timing of the story to be suspicious. Some unknown third party leaked this story right after Dai won big in Ward 6, but before the conventions the next day. The fox article was posted online at 7:21pm, well after the convention was over. The delegate totals were announced a bit before i posted them here at 12:27PM, so by 12:30 I would assume Carter's, Harris', and Thao's respective campaigns had all received word of the results from their people on site. It was apparently fox's lead TV story that night. Dai's campaign pulled their staff from Ward 3 the next day to shore up their firewall in Ward 7 because of the news that broke, but they were going to contest it hard before the abrupt change.

The largest sticking point for me might be that Sarah, who is apparently experienced in these matters, would arrange the meeting through Dai's campaign staff.

At ward 6 when my Grandmother and I were talking to Dai about sidewalks and disability mobility issues, at one point in the conversation he outright said "OK, here is the point where I take off my campaign hat and put on my City Council hat", and offered us some immediate help and information as it pertains to his job as a city councilman (changing gears from talking about potential policy changes before his statement).

The way in which he deliberately delineated between his two roles (including stuff like body language that I can't convey through text) sticks out in my mind, and makes my gut say it's something they have been conscientious about, and that they probably try to stay clear of situations like this. The emphasis on this separation has also been mentioned repeatedly recently by various experts and in various articles on this topic.

The difference between the care taken by Dai to keep the two roles separate, vs Sarah's lack of care, seems odd, if Dai is the one who solicited a bribe.

Just my 2 cents.

Sort of baffled why people are bending over backwards to give him the benefit of the doubt here, when there seems to be plenty of reports that this is exactly consistent with his past behavior. "Transactional Politician" isn't a term of endearment.

Perhaps because we've had interactions with Dai that lead us to believe there's more to this story than we know?

A minority on the rules committee is trying to force a rules change to get a Melvin Carter endorsement.



Edit: the initial results are 228 yes, 224 no.

We just voted against dividing a proposed amendment, 298 against dividing it, 125 in favor.

An amendment is up that would allow a motion for no endorsement after the 4th ballot, requiring only a simply majority to adjourn without endorsement, and to adjorn the convention at 7pm.

Apparently we're voting on the amendment in parts, so I misheard the yeah/no count(?)

First part passed by a voice vote, second part passed 265 yes, 175 no.

We split the proposed minority agenda changes into
1) adding in the prayer breaks
2) switching the order so the mayoral endorsement comes before the school board endorsement

2) is meant to help Carter get the endorsement, of course.

1) has passed

2) passed 247 yes, 175 no

The credentials report says 434 delegates are seated, and 38 autodelegates are seated.

Another credentials report: 488/500 seated delegates after upgrading some alternates, and either 30 or 37 autodelegates.

Dai said he's no longer going to honor the endorsement. Not surprising, but still pretty lame.

No drop, so we're moving to an identical second ballot.

Delegate totals were 250 Carter, 120 Thao, 114 Harris, 38 Goldstein, and 7 No Endorsement.

Things were getting tense at the end, but there's no endorsement. 276 Carter, 137 thao, 93 no endorsement. Harris' people kept together after he was dropped from the ballot.

Does Elizabeth Dickinson (Green Party) possibly have an outside chance here? Or will party-loyal DFLers mostly rank amongst the DFL candidates? Reading her streets.mn questionnaire (and knowing nothing else about her), I could be swayed into ranking her ahead of Carter or Thao at this point. Could she make a strong play at "rank me second" and actually win if first place votes are evenly divided amongst Carter, Thao, and Harris?

Without a good first-choice showing she'd be eliminated too early for the second-place votes of Carter or Thao to matter. Let's say the first-choice vote is:

30 Carter
25 Thao
25 Harris
10 Dickinson
5 Goldstein
5 Holden/other

(These are just guesses. Maybe it's 20 Thao and 30 Harris? Maybe 40 Carter and 20 Harris/Thao? I do think Carter is ahead.)

Those Holden and Goldstein voters would presumably break toward Harris, so she'd be the next eliminated. She'd need a showing at least in the top three to make it, and I don't see that with three strong DFL candidates. I think a lot of this will come down to Thao. His theory was that a surge of Hmong voters could propel him over Carter, at which point he'd gain Carter's and Dickinson's second-choice votes to beat Harris. If that fails, where do his voters turn?

If Thao were to get eliminated I'd be quite surprised if the majority of his votes didn't go to Carter.

Thao's vote is pretty split, though. The "white hyper-progressive" vote he's cultivated (e.g. the Our Revolution MN endorsement) will presumably go straight to Carter, and that could be enough. But a lot of Hmong voters are surprisingly conservative.

That's a good point, though I know a number of Hmong who fall under the "progressive" label and appear to have large followings of other Hmong. They tend to be younger, of course but I have no idea what the implications of that are. Which groups are most politically active?

Probably a moderate danger for Carter in this regard is Thao voters who don't specify a second choice. I imagine there will be a not insignificant number of them

I'm not sure what the participation rates are overall, but while virtually every one of Dai's campaign workers is very young, a huge number of his delegates were elderly.