32nd District Convention Tonight

Tonight, Delegates to the 32nd Senate District Convention will descend upon the Woodbury Senior Center at 7pm to nominate a new Republican candidate to fill the vacant seat. The mechanics of the convention are fairly simple, but because they usually happen in bunches, they are never featured as a wonder of democracy in action, but rather generally viewed as pro forma exercises in ridiculousness as required by bureaucracy - and sometimes, they are. But during a special election, wherein the law provides for no primary, the Convention is where the action is at.


For this evening's convention, 65 Delegates will be seated from the ten towns, with the following breakdown:


Bethlehem - 4
Bridgewater - 3
Middlebury - 6
Oxford - 7
Roxbury -3
Seymour (Districts 1 & 3 are in the 32nd District) - 5
Southbury - 13
Thomaston - 4
Watertown - 13
Woodbury - 7


Per the Connecticut Republicans State Party Bylaws, these delegates to the convention were chosen back in March of 2006 to nominate a Republican for the 2006 general election - in this case, Senator DeLuca was renominated - and are called to reconvene to nominate a replacement candidate. In the case that a delegate is unable to attend, they are allowed to designate an alternate to attend.

Four people had expressed an interest in the seat at one time or another - State Representative Art O'Neill, Watertown Town Councilor Rob Kane, Seymour Republican Town Committee Chair Brian Koskelowski, and former Oxford First Selectman August Palmer III. Mr. Palmer withdrew his name from consideration.

Tonight's convention will be opened by the previous Permanent Convention Chairman, Rob Kane. Subsequent to him gavelling the convention to order, it is anticipated that Mr. Kane will ask for nominations for a Permanent Chairman, as no candidate for the Convention's nomination can be its Permanent Chairman. Whomever the Convention delegates nominate and then vote for shall hold the position. The new Chair will then call for a rules committee and a credentials committee to be formed for the purpose of establishing rules and verifying the credentials of the attending delegates. The generally accepted practice is to select Roberts Rules of Order as the rules, though the convention has a wide range of ability to make modifications to the rules if they so choose.

Once those two committees have met and performed their functions, the floor will be open for nominations. And then the rest will be up to the delegates.

We will post results from the 32nd District Convention as soon as we get them.