I forget whether Friday evening was billed as a banquet. Whatever they called it, I wouldn’t call it a banquet. The food, which was strictly incidental, was a rubber chicken buffet–without the chicken. Cold roast beef, sandwiches three times the size of a postage stamp, dice made of cheese, and sliced veggies.
Also incidental were any speeches that were made. Somebody spoke to himself on the microphone for five minutes. I couldn’t decipher a word of it at the back of the “banquet” room. No one paid the least attention to him. They were there for the main attraction: each other. It was a chance to network, trade war stories, briefly make the acquaintance of like minded people you’ll never see again. Everybody nibbled fried mushrooms from their five inch plates and circulated. In fact, I dropped a fried mushroom and the woman I was talking to–we’ll allow her to remain nameless–smiled, picked it up and popped it in her mouth. She was efficient and unembarrassed. I hadda love it.
Jay Nixon spoke for five minutes or so to rally the troops. Maybe three fourths of the people in the room quit talking for that. As soon as he stopped, a couple of hundred conversations resumed. So did the band. Hearing what was said was problematic.
I talked to Ken Jacob and Judy Baker, both vying for Hulshof’s seat in the Ninth. Ken likes to split wood. “Like Bush,” I said, but Ken explained that he himself chops wood. Bush saws it. OK. Judy’s excited about the year and her campaign. But she does moan that she’s got to find a way to be less … “boring.” Not that she is. All she means is that she’s no fun to gossip about. She should start a rumor that she has ties to organized crime. That’ll jazz up her image.
Steve Gaw was there, too, but I didn’t get a chance to meet him. Saturday, maybe.
Jeff Harris told me the latest on his nasty little e-mail skirmish with G. W. Blunt. Harris says he communicated to the guv today his preliminary estimate of how much material he’ll be turning over in answer to the administration’s sunshine request: about 75,000 pages of documents and 5,000 e-mails at a cost to the state of something in the neighborhood of $10,000.
Jeff figures they were mighty surprised at his swift compliance since he’s a lawyer. They probably expected him to do what they would do: use lawyerly tricks to stonewall. They’d assume he’d have lots of embarrassing shenanigans to hide, just like they do. Nope. He’s turning it all over to them.Take that, you weasels. Your snotty little game just fell flat.
Jake Zimmerman was in his element, schmoozing, wise cracking, and having a helluva good time. He’s delighted that House Republicans and Senate Republicans are so cheesed off at each other that they can’t even get passed what they both want to pass. He says they may be so busy hating each other that they might slip up and fail to get the Voter I.D. amendment ready for the ballot. Maybe. But probably not.
Tommy Roberts, the chair of the Democratic Committee in St. Charles County was telling me that he just won an aldermanic election in St. Peters: he’s the first ever Democrat to win an aldermanic election in that staunch Republican stronghold. More on that race in the next week or so.
Byron DeLear was there. Of course. I’ve been saying for several months now that I expect to start running into him at Schnucks. I see him everywhere else.
The party’s over now. Time to hit the sack.