After a day of being mostly offline for a work project, I came home briefly to decided if I should continue my offline time by attending the New Haven Young Democrats meeting with Connecticut Democratic State Chair Nancy DiNardo.

I don’t really qualify as a young Democrat, but the topic was about conventions, not only the National Democratic Convention, but also stories about previous contested conventions in Connecticut as well as upcoming conventions. I’ve been particularly interested in the whole gamut of conventions, so I decided to stop by, hear what Nancy had to say, see some old friends, and perhaps make some new friends.

Nancy spoke about the 1994 State Convention and the competition between Bill Curry and John Larson for the Gubernatorial nomination. There was also a discussion of the 2006 State Convention with the contest between Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont for the Senate nomination and the contest between John DeStefano and Dan Malloy for the Gubernatorial nomination.

Upcoming conventions, like the State Convention on May 10, and the Congressional Conventions on May 12th were also discussed. These conventions are unlikely to have contested races, but they are a great chance to experience conventions. The State Convention is expected to include a proposed rule change to the party that would expand State Central to include seats for Young Democrats.

Yet the big concern was what will happen at the National Convention. The general hope was that a clear nominee will emerge before the convention, yet various aspects of how the convention works in case it is contested were discussed. This included a brief discussion about members of the various standing committees, Rules, Platform and Credentials, and who will be representing Connecticut on these committees. The role of Superdelegates was also discussed. Nancy DiNardo, as State Chair is a superdelegate. She, along with Congressman Joe Courtney from the Second Congressional District, have not pledged support to either candidate at this point. She spoke of using her position as an uncommitted delegate to push the candidates to do the right things for the Democratic Party. This includes strongly encouraging them to focus their attacks on the Republican candidate, and not on each other, and in making sure that ‘blue states’ do not get overlooked during the general election campaign.

It was noted that residents of Connecticut often have family or friends living in battleground states, and working through these friendships can often be more effective that handing out material to strangers at malls. This lead to a discussion of the neighbor to neighbor program that Ms. DiNardo had brought brochures for. She also spoke credit card that you could get that would assist in fundraising for the State Democratic Party.

The discussion drifted to local candidates, including a great list of things that Rep. Rosa DeLauro has done for the district and the need to get new candidates to run for State Legislative offices that have had a Democrat run in recent years. The new campaign finance laws, together with what people hope will be a strong year for Democrats means that seats that seemed invulnerable in the past could be up for grabs this year.

All in all, it was a great meeting of the New Haven Young Dems, and even though I’m a bit old for the Young Dems, they are a great group and I look forward to hearing, and spreading the word about their future meetings.