We’re part of the way through Minnesota’s gubernatorial nominating convention, which you can follow at the Star Tribune. After three rounds of voting, it’s:
Kelliher, 414.5 or 30.7 percent
Rybak, 370 or 27.4 percent
Thissen, 295 or 21.8 percent
Rukavina 269 or 19.9 percent
State Sen. John Marty dropped out just after the second round. Otherwise, things have not shifted much. Sixty percent is needed to secure the nomination, though several other candidates are pledging to fight through to the primary.
UPDATE: Apparently, Rukavina has dropped out and endorsed MAK. This happened after the fourth ballot, it appears, which MinnesotaMike says went:
MAK 437 (42.8%)
Rybak 380.5 (28.6%)
Thissen 285 (21.4%)
Rukavina 226 (17%)
No Endorsement 4
Strike that – there was an error. Trying again:
MAK: 437 (32.80%)
Rybak: 380.5 (28.56%)
Thissen: 285 (21.39%)
Rukavina: 226 (16.96%)
UPDATE (James): Rybak has pulled out of the race and thrown his support to Kelliher:
Surrounded by a crowd of green-shirted supporters, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak took the podium at the DFL convention in Duluth Saturday night and withdrew from the race for governor, saying it was time for the DFL party “to come together and support Margaret Anderson Kelliher for governor.”
“Thank you so much,” he told a cheering crowd of activists who rose to their feet. “It is time for the greatest party in history to come together and support Margaret Anderson Kelliher.”
Go Rybak!
I don’t know MN politics, does the winner of this contest go on to the primary election or what?
Endorses Kelliher
MAK 437 (42.8%)
Rybak 380.5 (28.6%)
Thissen 285 (21.4%)
Rukavina 226 (17%)
No Endorsement 4
Per uptake.com
What a mess.
I’m following things via a dfl search on Twitter, and have just seen a few tweets of people complaining about superdelegates hijacking the convention. That’s silly, when you recognize that Rybak isn’t even at 30% and MAK is barely over it through 4 ballots.
increases to 24% next ballot and then to 28% for the remainder of the ballots. We will probably will be down to a 2 person race soon.
Time to watch the Twins for a bit.
does the person with the convention endorsement acknowledge the candidates running in the primary, or act like the presumptive nominee
Missed the vote totals but here are the percentages.
Kelliher got 46.9%, Rybak got 32.3% and Thissen got 20.1%. There were 9 no endorsement votes for less than 1 percent
Thissen needs 24% next ballot to remain in contention. Looks like MAK will probably take it.
Does not endorse anyone.
Rybak concedes before 6th ballot results are announced.
MAK has too much baggage to drag along. No way she wins, whether it be the primary or the general.
MAK won solely because of the fucked up system DFL activists require of their politicians. She will make the worse of the GE candidates out of the tier 1 candidates and Im really hopeful that a primary will show that. Terrible speaker, motivates no one, thorough record of failure as Speaker, got steamrolled by T-Paw over and over again while having near 2/3 proof majority, seems to have forgotten she is from Minneapolis as she campaigned as a Mankato candidate, won on the back of super delegates as her house caucus all gets a super delegate vote , only positive thing about her I hear is that she’s a woman, zero record of accomplishment legislatively that I know of, and I’ll stop there.
Her winning represents everything wrong with the DFL endorsement process. It was widely thought that her entering last year was based on one thing, how she did in the budget negotiations with T-Paw and making sure she doesnt piss of the base and get steamrolled again. She not only got steam rolled politically, but constitutionally. T-Paw used state given powers unconstitutionally to do whatever he wanted with the budget and she got steam rolled like never before. So everyone thought, nope, she just got SPANKED, how on earth can she enter the race with such egg on her face?
Only in Minnesota….. DFL activists look beyond the actual real issues every day voters care about. For example, during the Q&A after all the candidates gave their speeches, the very first question wasn’t about the economy, jobs, energy, education, or anything average Minnesotans care about, it was about Instant Run-off Voting! How many of you even know what IRV is? I just cant believe we box ourselves in with this process, it is so stupid and the delegates who pick our candidate have absolutely zero degree of similarity to the overall electorate. You could simply kill off the entire DFL caucusing crowd and still win an election easily enough because we represent such a small percentage. We are the freaking margin of error!
And RT is a god damn fool for not running in the primary. Pull your head out of your ass and run for Governor of Minnesota, not Governor of .0077% of the voting populace who have no legal say in who is the nominee.
and a waste of money too.
of reclaiming this just went from 2:1 to 1:1.
I’m pretty sure even Dayton would be a stronger candidate than Kelliher.
I encourage everyone to vote against back room deals with Rep. Tom Rukavina and Sen. John Marty and vote for Mark Dayton for governor in the August Primary. I supported Rep. Paul Thissen for governor and also have a lot of respect for R.T. Rybak and would have enthusiastically voted for either one of them because they would have united the DFL in order to ensure that no Republican wins this November. However this nomination has almost guaranteed that many DFL votes will go to the Independence Party candidate and split the party.