At the outset, I have to say that I don’t know how any of the folks live blogged this event. It was far too noisy and you’d be hardpressed to keep up. So for those of you bloggers who did, I truly applaud you.
Gilmore’s speech was about as exciting as breaking seemingly a dried cow manure patty and not being sure what you might find. On the otherhand, Marshall’s speech provided the turn that made the convention fairly exciting. His supporters were supercharged. Whether you agree with the content of the speech, the delivery was oustanding. It must be seen and heard to be appreciated. No one else in that convention came close to giving that speech, except for Del. Frederick, now chairman Frederick.
I’m not going to add anything that others have already commented on but instead give you something new that you may not have heard:
1. On Friday, Chairman Hager was unable to address a simple situation where a delegate requested to be identified for the purposes of a motion. It began when Gary Byler rose to nominate Lt. Gov. Bolling as temporary Chairman. All of this appeared pursuant to a script. However, after Byler nomintated, a delegate requested to be recognized but before a motion to second. Then Chairman Hager sought to second the motion of Byler. The parliamentarian was called. Folks were asked to yell loud if they wanted Bolling or Byler, and when that wasn’t good enough, asked to stand up or sit down indicating responses to questions. The problem is that the sound quality was not easy and it was difficult to hear what was going on. In essense, people were standing or sitting, or raising their hand without understanding why. It was a good ole’ fashion cluster. People got upset when a motion from the floor to close the nomination process occurred without the movant being recognized. Meanwhile, the delegate who sought to be recognized eventually gave up. Word has it that a former RPV Chair was going to be nominated for Temporary Chair.
Hager supporters who saw this thought it was a display of ineptness and were rather angry. Many tore off their Hager labels which was rather surprising. In his speech today, Frederick noted this incident as being indicative of a Richmond-top-down-we’ll-tell-you-what-to-do-approach.
2. The razor’s edge between Marshall and Gilmore is not fully understood. The end result showed a difference of 84 (?) votes I believe. However, keep in mind that 84 votes DOES NOT REPRESENT 84 people. The votes are weighted according to the number of delegates.
For instance, suppose Caroline County had something like 4 delegates who showed up to cast 180 votes. Suppose further that only one of those 4 was a Mashall supporter. 180 /4 = 45. If we now suppose that 2 of the 4 had gone to Marshall, Marshall wins the nomination. See? So for Marshall to lose by a mere 80 votes, less than 1/2 percent is an extremely tight squeeze for Gilmore. I will blog on this later.
Have a great weekend and don’t forget Church tomorrow.
