Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Chaudhary out, Goodwin in, Chaudhary still running

From The Big E at Minnesota Progressive Project:
At an emergency meeting of the DFL SD50 Central Committee, Sen. Satveer Chaudhary was unendorsed 33-12 (exact totals unconfirmed) 32-12.  After unendorsing Chaudhry, they endorsed former two-term legislator Barb Goodwin 33-7.  Apparently, several Chaudhary supporters stormed out of the meeting after the unendorsement. 
So there you have it, Satveer Chaudhary is no longer the DFL endorsed candidate, Barb Goodwin is. So that's that right? Not quite.
Chaudhary will appeal the unendorsement to the DFL's Constitution Committee.  Brian Rice will be representing him.  Allan Weinblatt will be representing the SD50 Central Committee.

All he can contest is whether or not SD50 Central Committee were within their rights to unendorse him and will probably contest whether they did it correctly and had a quorem present.
So Chaudhary will appeal the action on the basis that the committee didn't actually get a 2/3 vote of those eligible to attend, just a 2/3 vote of those who actually attended. While I'm not too familiar with the unendorsement process, my suspicion is that his appeal will fail. That leaves us with a primary between Goodwin and Chaudhary, as Chaudhary has said he will run to the primary regardless of what happens with the appeal.This sets up what should be an interesting race, as Barb Goodwin is someone whom people in SD50 will be familiar with from her time in the state house.

One thing that I think is worth knowing about Chaudhary's attempts to keep the endorsement prior to last night's meeting (via Minnpost):
He'd also angered party leaders by supporting former Sen. Mark Dayton in the governor's race over DFL-endorsed House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher. Chaudhary tried to remedy that problem over the weekend when he sent a letter and a $100 check to the Kelliher campaign.
That is close to a perfect encapsulation of how Satveer Chaudhary has handled this whole situation, a day late and a dollar short.

I'll have more on this race as it develops further.

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