A Long Day in Kansas
(Cross-Posted to DemNotes at www.DemNotes.com)
This afternoon, at the Fall Meeting of the Association of State Democratic Chairs, we continued to have some very productive training and sessions for the Chairs, Vice Chairs, and Executive Directors of the various state parties here in Kansas City / Overland Park, KS. After posting the last message to DemNotes, I rushed downstairs back int our meetings, where we learned more about how to effectively run coordinated campaigns. It’s a little bit harder to run coordinated campaigns (indeed, in past years, we’ve been prohibited from using that phrase, “coordinated campaigns”) in Colorado with our more restrictive campaign finance rules, but we tend to still run plenty of field efforts with buy-in from our statewide races, such as the US Senate race and the Presidential campaign.
After that discussion, we heard more about planning as a state party for the Convention in Denver. The panel for this presentation featured a good variety — a state chair, a pair of long-time executive directors, and two folks from the DNCC (Cameron Moody, who directs operations for the DNCC; and Sky Gallegos, who is the Deputy CEO for Intergovernmental Relations for the DNCC). There was a lot of discussion of how to prepare delegates for what a convention will be like, especially new delegates, and how state parties need to properly plan to spend a week-plus in Denver. (Advice from the Utah E.D.? Drink lots of water the week beforehand.)
We ended the evening with a bus ride across the state line to the Truman Library, in Independence, Missouri. I’m a big fan of Harry Truman — as some of you know, I occasionally perform as Harry Truman for county parties. So it was quite a blessing to be treated to this wonderful event — the Library was opened exclusively for the ASDC crowd, and we had the place to ourselves. Ironically, the Missouri Democratic Party sponsored our lunch today in Overland Park, Kansas (where the speaker was the Lt. Governor of Kansas), while the Kansas Democratic Party sponsored our reception at the Truman Library in Missouri!
In any event, both of the state parties involved in co-hosting this ASDC meeting have been wonderful to their guests. Midwestern hospitality is alive and well, and this has been a very productive week for your Colorado Democratic Party leadership here this weekend. We head back tomorrow afternoon; hopefully, I’ll get back in time to attend the Jefferson County Dems’ annual Eleanor Roosevelt dinner tomorrow night at the Sheraton Denver West. If you’d like more information, you can visit the JeffCo Dems’ website at:
http://www.jeffcodems.org
Maybe I’ll see you there!