A Break Down on the GOP's Post-Convention Chaos

[00:00:01] Welcome to The Break Down with Brodkorb and Becky, a weekly podcast that breaks down politics, policy, and current affairs. I'm Becky Scherer. And I'm Michael Brodkorb.

[00:00:19] We are excited for an action-packed episode breaking down the MNGOP and DFL state conventions from this past weekend. After being joined by our resident DFL-er last week, we are pleased to be joined by our resident GOP-er this week, Preya Samzandar. With Preya, we're going to break down what happened at the MNDFL convention, which was a whole lot of nothing.

[00:00:38] And then we're going to move to the right and cover all the chaos that is the MNGOP candidate and endorsement process. We will start by the U.S. Senate endorsement, then break down the governor's endorsement on Saturday. We will fact-check our predictions, and we will talk about the clicker battle and debacle and the chaos that came with it. We will get into the number of ballots, some speeches and statements, and the overall aftermath in the following days. Thank you for joining us and enjoy the show.

[00:01:01] We are excited to be joined today by one of our favorite guests, Preya Samzandar. And we are going to be breaking down all things convention. Convention weekend came and went, and it definitely delivered on some drama and spice and maybe not-so-things-nice that we were hoping out of the weekend. But I'm going to start off by addressing the DFL convention because it happened. It should have deserved some time. They had the governor's endorsement on Friday. Amy Klobuchar won on the first ballot.

[00:01:31] However, there was a little bit of drama here. Their delegates nominated Kobe Lane, a former Minnesota legislative assistant. From the floor, she did get 3%. You only need 60 to get the endorsement, so Klobuchar still got that handily on the first ballot.

[00:01:47] But there are some articles that allege that backstage Klobuchar was pretty upset that she was getting a challenger and loudly declared her frustration and then said she was going to leave because of the 26-year-old progressive activist opponent. Thoughts? Anyone surprised? I think it's a great story for Senator Klobuchar because it positions her that she got challenged from the left. She looks more mainstream, more moderate. I think it's a win-win for her. I guess that's fair.

[00:02:16] That's a very pragmatic approach. As I kind of see it, it's just another tale of the Klobuchar woes of just how poor her temperament is. I mean, we've had so many stories over the last, what, seven years about what a terrible boss Amy Klobuchar has been and how poor her temperament is. And now this is just another sign that, like, she hasn't changed. And God help her campaign staff.

[00:03:12] That's all I can say. It's surprising to me that they were, was this not discussed with her prior? Like, that she said, well, I'm going to leave. Did you not know that this was a possibility? Because we knew this was a possibility. I mean, she encountered it in 2024. Like, there were the stories of the more progressive delegates that were marching around, like, screaming at her from the floor because of her position on Israel at the time.

[00:03:37] I'm just noting, I'm noting the discussions about temperament and people being upset because when we get to the state convention, we're going to have, we can get to have some further conversations about temperament and judgment.

[00:03:49] Yeah, I think it might get a little spicy among some, you know, different variations of Republicans on this podcast. So I'm excited for this. Yeah. So that was kind of nothing burger. She did announce her LG pick last week, former Fergus Falls mayor. Is there anything notable of this LG pick that you guys have found? Or is that just kind of checks the box of greater Minnesota and somebody that she thinks she can work with and won't steal her thunder?

[00:04:18] Sometimes you make a pick to help align yourself up to win the general election. It appears that she picked someone that she has a good working relationship from greater Minnesota. That is an important strategic value. The other more most important strategic value is do no harm. And there's no evidence to date in comparison to some of the other picks that have been made that she did anything, that she did anything bad by making this pick. It also shows, I think, the rollout, how professional and professional and professional.

[00:04:47] And I think shows that the Klobuchar campaign is under zero pressure externally in this campaign and they are free to make decisions based on who they want to run and no other political considerations needed.

[00:05:01] He's also just incredibly progressive. Probably hoping to shore up some of those progressive ties a little bit. But I think it's kind of like a wolf in sheep's clothing of choice because obviously from Fergus Falls, greater Minnesota, CD7, probably one of the reddest areas in the state.

[00:05:18] So I think when you naturally think Fergus Falls mayor, you're like, oh, that's a very conservative, very red, very rural values. But he's actually probably one of the more progressive Democrats from greater Minnesota and probably even gives her like Klobuchar a run for her money in terms of like progressive values. Yep. Well, I think as we move forward to hear more from him on the campaign trail, I think I'm excited to have more conversations about him.

[00:05:46] But that was kind of the nothing burger of governor race on the DFL side. Similarly to the Senate, Craig announced she was not going to the convention. Everybody was behind Flanagan, who which is not a surprise. I think that's what we anticipated was going to happen. I mean, is there any even any conversation necessary about this one?

[00:06:05] I think it's worth noting that I really love Lieutenant Governor Flanagan's newfound affinity for the DFL endorsement when she bypassed it in 2018. And so it's great that she thinks that this is part of the democratic process. But she's she's currently holding elected office because she challenged the endorsement process. She raised concerns about the limited scope and view that people who couldn't commit to the delegate process.

[00:06:32] She encouraged in social media posts that people should have more of a say and more of a voice. And so I think, you know, we covered that in a previous episode, kind of particularly how I think Craig made the right decision to not give the visuals and the optics of a loss and that other contrast. And so on to the primary.

[00:06:54] On to the primary. I think there will be a lot of great conversations also coming out about how this race shapes up now that we are on to the primary, how they they target and message with within the suburbs and because there that is obviously up for grabs and a very differing candidate on how they can potentially win over the Democrats across the state, urban, suburban and greater Minnesota.

[00:07:19] So I am excited to still watch this campaign, even though I disappointedly did not get my inner party fight that I was really hoping was going to come out of Rochester from the DFL this weekend. But we can turn our attention to the MNGO state and MNGOP state convention. So to be perfectly clear, none of us were there. I think a lot of us had friends in the room and we're getting between Twitter and text messages, getting a lot of updates as we as we went.

[00:07:46] So we're going to start again with the Senate endorsement. This happened on Friday. Real quick, our predictions on this was that, Preya, we had Will on last week. We all did predictions of who was going to win endorsements and how many ballots. Michael and Will both said Schwarzie and three ballots. I said Schwarzie and five ballots. So I'm going to pat myself on the back right now and declare myself the winner of that prediction.

[00:08:11] First ballot, we had Schwarzie start out with 38 percent, Tafoya with 24 percent and White just under 20 percent moves on. Fourth ballot, the rules very specific on when to drop candidates. So Royce White was dropped after the fourth ballot due to convention rules. And on the fifth, Schwarzie got 55 and then on the sixth, 62.6. I don't think super surprising there.

[00:08:36] Do, in your experience, what you were gathering from people, was this truly delegates choosing? Was there an affinity and a like and an appreciation and a desire for Schwarzie? Or were people, were delegates just really not bought into the Tafoya policy stances and messaging and some of the, you know, saying that she was not going to go to the endorsement? What did you guys get from folks, either there or just general Republicans?

[00:09:03] I think it's a little bit of both. And Becky, I just want to say, I actually put predictions down on Thursday with a delegate friend of mine and I did have Schwarzie at five as well. Love that we were in sync on that. But I think it's a little bit of both. As we all know, we've all been a part of the party process for a very long time.

[00:09:22] Michael, probably the longest out of the three of us. But we kind of know what delegates expect, right? There is a level of courting and glad handing and retail politics that comes with the endorsement process. There's just an expectation that delegates have that you are going to court them for their vote and you need to tell them why their opinion matters to you as a candidate.

[00:09:50] I think when you look at the candidates and just in general and historically, delegates feel disrespected when a candidate is like, hey, love what you do, but like this isn't for me. I'm going straight to the party. They feel disrespected. Usually that's like a pretty big sign for them right off the bat that they're most likely not going to support you. I think Schwarzie did the work, like went in, was courting these delegates, going to the events, like having conversations with them.

[00:10:16] And the thing that I saw on social media, even just leading up to convention, were people respected that because he took the time to go out of his way to court them, to have that conversation and talk about the issues. But Tafoya wasn't showing up places. And when she was doing interviews, as we know, she is a bit more moderate. She's not as conservative as the delegate base. Some of her positions brought them the wrong way.

[00:10:40] And so I think between going straight to the primary and not abiding by the endorsement process and then having some of these positions as well, whether it's abortion, immigration, I think those two things really just set up a scenario where Schwarzie really was going to be the only candidate that was going to be walking away from convention with an endorsement that weekend from the Senate standpoint. Michael, your thoughts, anything surprise you about this or everybody coalescing behind Schwarzie?

[00:11:08] No, the only thing that surprised me is it took six ballots. My message will stay the same, what I've said. And I've been saying this for months, is that the delegates were not going to endorse a pro-choice candidate, particularly someone who wasn't abiding by the endorsement. And so that's how the vote played out, six ballots and onto the primary. I'll have more to talk about the endorsement pledge issue when we get to the governor's race. All right. Well, now the juice, the tea, the juicy part of this conversation.

[00:11:36] And I love that we're, you know, just 10 minutes in and already to it. So the governor's endorsement. This happened on Saturday. We're going to walk through it as it happened and chat about what went on because it certainly, you know, it stretched 10 ballots. There was voting controversies. There were, you know, the candidates dropping along the way and ultimately ended after 10 ballots with Kendall Qualls securing the endorsement.

[00:12:05] It was a long, long day. So this one, it started at 11 a.m. with the candidates up on stage doing their show and their speech and their presentation. And I think Qualls was endorsed shortly after 9 p.m. So this was 10 straight hours of just this race. And man, oh, man, did a lot go on. So let's just start off right off the bat. We had speeches. Everything was great. First ballot. We had Dameth in the lead with 32 percent.

[00:12:36] Kendall with 30 percent. Lindell just under 20 percent. Patrick Knight at 12. Parrish at three. And so on down. We then dropped, I think anybody under five was dropped. Next one, Lisa Dameth gained about 3 percent. Kendall Qualls gained about 3 percent. Mike Lindell gained about 1 percent. And Patrick Knight lost some. So we start to see the shift. Knight drops off. We go over. We have now Dameth over 40 percent.

[00:13:05] She got 41.5. Kendall at 35. And Mike Lindell at 22 percent. Lindell was dropped after the fourth. Again, due to convention rules. And so as we kind of note here, and this will be a part of the conversation we're going to have. First ballot started with 2017 votes. Fourth ballot now at 1,896 votes. Dameth gains a little bit. 42.4 percent. Kendall gains a little bit. 35.8 percent. And Mike Lindell at 21 percent. He is dropped.

[00:13:35] Just my little note about Lindell as well. He has since chosen Phil Parrish, who was also one of the candidates, as his running mate. We can save that conversation for a later date. Then we get into the fifth ballot. And this is where we start seeing some friction, some controversy, and some logs of or chunks of time to figure it out. So fifth ballot, we've now dropped down to just over 15, 1556 voters. And Qualls takes the lead.

[00:14:04] He has just under 50 percent at 49.9. Dameth has 46 percent. No endorsement gets 62 percent on down. Convention chair was state rep Danny Nadeau. He confirmed there were hundreds of delegates and alternates that were not voting. And then we start to see a little bit of fallout here. So feel free to jump in. I'm just going to kind of rattle it off as the timeline that I saw based, again, on what I was getting in on Twitter.

[00:14:31] You know, we talked about it on Friday that there was going to be a clicker floor flight. I don't think that anybody anticipated that we would have this issue. It still boggles my mind that in 2026, there are technological issues in life in general. But so it goes. So we see then, you know, again, between the fourth and fifth ballot, a number of voters dropped off.

[00:14:55] The convention had said that there were just under 2,100 total voting strength. On that fifth ballot, 1,556 voted. They went in to vote for the sixth ballot. And then chair Nadeau announced that they're going to re-vote on the sixth ballot because without the first results being released, there was going to—there was some kind of problem involving the electronic clickers. They said a couple of the statements I pulled from different people's tweets that they announced a recess,

[00:15:25] that they were—there was a ballot with inconsistencies. They were working with the candidates on how to resolve it, that there were—let's see—that there were some inconsistencies in a ballot, and there were some abnormalities. And so they were really working hard. I've been on that side of it. It's a big thing, lots going on. Technology that is not the party's technology. It's a third-party vendor that comes in to do this. And ultimately, they re-voted on the sixth ballot.

[00:15:53] So we originally started the—they did then release those results with the sixth ballot. Version 1 was 1,500 votes. Version 2 was 1909, and that's the one they kind of went with. Again, it was Qualls at 55 percent, Dameth at 42 percent. You need 60 percent to go—to vote. They explained a little bit more that there was an anomaly that affected the number of votes received by voting—electronics voting system between 5 and 6, but it did not affect the re-vote of ballot 6. They said they restarted the system, and it started working again.

[00:16:23] So I want to stop there, and I think kind of just chat about what happened up to this day, this time, and move through it. And as you guys were seeing this, you know, the fallout happening, getting, I'm sure, crazy, wild text messages from people in the room, like, what the hell is going on here? Michael, what was your initial thought as you see this going through, the change in votes, the drop-off? I think I even texted you at one point that was like, 340 people didn't vote between 4 and 5. Like, what is going on?

[00:16:51] And it's very common for the vote total to move as people go to the bathroom or get food or take a phone call or just don't get their vote in on time. But there was some wild stuff going on. What was your initial thought? How did you work through this and process this with the information you were gathering? Before we get into, I think, how this mess has unfolded, I just want to say that I think the significant thing in terms of the balloting is Lindell was dropped on ballot 4, after ballot 4.

[00:17:18] And it was around the time of ballot 5, Blois-Holson had posted a picture showing that Lindell's campaign manager was holding up a sign for quals. And so I think there was a drop in voting, that there has been an acknowledgement of a technical issue. But ultimately, there's a political line that I think happened throughout this convention, which is Lisa Damus showed up with roughly 31, 32 percent.

[00:17:44] That was consistent with what happened on what she won on the night of straw ballots. And so she came into that convention with almost over 60 percent, if not closer to 70 percent of the delegates, wanting someone else other than her. That mirrored what happened on the straw ballot night. That mirrored what happened at the convention. And as candidates dropped off, they went to candidates other than Damus.

[00:18:12] And I see, when you start to look at the vote totals, setting aside what the chair of the convention called an anomaly, I think you can start to see that Damus came in with what she had at the straw ballot. And as the candidates dropped, those candidates that dropped picked other candidates to support other than Damus. And they aligned with quals. And that was the lead up to ballots 7, 8, 9, and 10, which I don't think there's much of any controversy over those ballots.

[00:18:42] But I think that we can discuss the technical anomaly. But I think the balloting and the numbers show that Damus did not have the votes to get endorsed at the convention. All right. Preya, your thoughts on the shenanigans or debacle as it unfolded? So, I actually thought that Kendall was going to win between 5 and 7 votes for a lot of those same reasons that Michael kind of outlined.

[00:19:10] You know, coming into convention with, I think, 31% was, you know, Damus' final total from that gubernatorial straw poll with AFP that Thursday night. And just kind of seeing, like, how delegates had been voting in these straw polls over the last six months, really since state central. She kept coming in second, third on a lot of these straw polls. I think she won a couple. But it was primarily Kendall that had been winning these.

[00:19:36] And so, kind of taking that data set and just seeing how delegates were kind of looking at this, I thought Kendall was going to win between 5 and 7. To Michael's point, you have to look at what the delegate makeup was and kind of how delegates just in general have been, like, treating this process over the last couple of cycles. They tend to move further to the right. They tend to look for more, like, outsider candidates, candidates who haven't been elected before, folks who have different backgrounds from, like, the traditional politician.

[00:20:05] That, and considering the fact that we had, you know, Patrick Knight up there, Mike Lindell. I kind of expected that Phil Parrish and, you know, Peggy Bennett, if she had been up there as well, they were going to fall off after, you know, vote 1. Their votes would kind of split evenly between Lisa and Kendall. You'd get to ballot 2. Patrick Knight was then going to drop with his, like, mid-teens. That vote was probably going to split about 60-40 is what I had expected. And that's kind of generally what happened. And they're going to split towards Damus.

[00:20:35] Just because when you look at the type of candidate Patrick Knight was, very similar to Lisa Damus. They were going to kind of pull from the same group of delegates. Where things get exciting is when Lindell drops after that. Because a lot of Lindell's folks, they are more further right. They tend to have more, you know, traditionally conservative beliefs. They are going to be looking for that political outsider candidate.

[00:21:02] They're going to be more aligned with the A4Ls of the world. Those folks were never going to go to a Damus-type candidate. And so really the only home that they could either find was to either not vote or to go to Kendall Qualls. And I believe that the majority of Lindell's voters were going to choose Kendall as their, like, second option. And so when we saw the anomalies start to take place where they're like, well, we're not sure, like, what's going on.

[00:21:27] My initial thought actually was that these Lindell voters were like, okay, like, our guy dropped. What do we do now? Like, they kind of expect us to vote. But, like, we need to be looking for cues on how we should be, like, voting or, like, making that decision. And so I was like, they could be, like, making that decision. And that's why they dropped off because they just didn't have enough time. Or they purposely, like, held off to try and see if they could force the no endorsement.

[00:21:54] Because we knew going into convention there were a couple of campaigns that we're going to be pushing for that no endorsement as well. And so that's kind of what I was generally thinking before they came up with the issues with the clokers. This is the fun part because I get to play not even devil's advocate. I just have a differing view of things.

[00:22:14] So my view is first off being on the third ballot before, or I'm sorry, on the fourth ballot before he was dropped, Mike Lindell had 408 votes. And then the next vote, approximately 340 fewer delegates voted. I, the ultimate skeptic in me, finds it so hard to believe that any campaign can get 300 of their supporters to do anything, let alone not vote.

[00:22:41] So I don't think, I don't buy into that was just Lindell supporters sitting by the wayside. An abnormality or some sort of issue with the voting system is, to me, what makes sense. And then I also think if you look between the fourth and fifth ballot, again, where that big discrepancy comes in, Kendall Qualls gained 70 votes and Dameth lost about 70 votes. And then we still have those 340 not voting.

[00:23:09] So to me, I did, in my predictions, I didn't say this at the beginning, I was the only one. Qualls, I'm sorry, Will said Qualls in eight ballots. Michael said Qualls in four to five. I said Dameth in six. So I did go into this thinking that she could pull a little bit of a McFadden sort of working the floor as she goes and get it done. It didn't happen. Then we see the reboot of the six. But I instantly was suspicious. Anytime you see a drop like that, to me, I just don't buy that it was that coordinated.

[00:23:38] I believe that delegates go in and very quickly, especially if it's, I would say, majority of these voters, I'm sorry, majority of these delegates, I believe, had their second choice in mind. Largely because the candidates asked for that. If you're with somebody, you know, if they are not successful, can I get you, can I be your second choice?

[00:23:59] So the thought to me that any campaign or any 340 Lindell voters just chose to at the same time not vote on the fifth ballot, to me, I don't buy it. But I see a very interesting looks coming from Michael. So I need you to feed back to me what you're thinking. So you don't think that 350 people voted in mass for Lindell, but you're completely comfortable with the 807 that voted with Dameth in mass?

[00:24:27] I mean, it doesn't make any sense. No, no, no. I'm not saying that those people. No, no, no. Sorry. Maybe I wasn't clear. I'm not. Your logic is that delegates don't vote in mass. But then. Sorry. You don't think that they. Maybe I'm not. I wasn't clear. I don't. I 100% believe that Lindell got 408 voters. I'm saying that the discrepancies, the 340 people that did not vote on the fifth ballot after Lindell dropped, but had voted on the fourth ballot.

[00:24:54] But I don't think they all were saying, we're Lindell. We're looking for a cue of where to go. So we're 350 of us are just going to hold back. I don't believe that that was some waiting for their cue before they jumped back in. I think that there was a genuine abnormality voting issue. Do you guys not agree? I believe that the chair of the convention acknowledged and the delegates did that there was an anomaly.

[00:25:21] I don't believe that anomaly lasted the entire night. And I don't believe that that anomaly ultimately changed how this convention was going to endorse. That's what I'm. And I just want to be clear. And I said this on social media. I'm not anti-Dameth. I'm not anti-anyone. I'm just anti-BS. Clickers have problems. We use when I was the, as I came into the party, it was Scantron sheets. It was paper ballots. It was other types of thing that was done.

[00:25:50] I just want to let the Dameth campaign, the Qualls campaign, the Lindell campaign, all of the campaigns had input into how this decision was made. And so my bigger concern, if we're going to get into problems with the convention, is why did the campaigns not insist on a credentials report before every ballot? Okay, that wasn't happening.

[00:26:15] When I was involved in the party, Linda Prestes or someone would come up there and say, this is the number we have at registration. These are the number of seated delegates. These are the number of seated alternates. This is the vote total. Have at it. None of that was done. None of the campaigns insisted on that consistent rolling vote total. So it wasn't done and the party didn't. And so where my issue is, is that particularly the Dameth campaign and all the campaigns had some say.

[00:26:42] Now that doesn't mean that they all supported electronic balloting. Lindell's campaign did not support electronic balloting. And there are some legitimate concerns that I have with electronic balloting. Because if you look at the RNC platform about paper ballots, and if you look at previous conventions.

[00:27:01] But the reality is, is that I think where I fault the campaigns and specifically the Dameth campaign is that what checks and balances did they have in place to make sure that the voting tabulation was done correctly? Number one. And number two. How do they explain away the reality of people that have knowledge in looking at this vote and saying, Lisa Dameth was not going to get endorsed that day? And I think so. I think I didn't explain myself correctly either.

[00:27:30] I think leading up to before we knew, because there was like an hour and a half between them actually giving an answer. My initial thoughts went to like, okay, maybe there was an issue. When they were like, you know, there's anomaly in the ballots, in the electronic balloting, we figured it out. I was like, okay, that makes sense. And the reason why is we saw this exact same thing happen in 2018 or 2022. I'm pretty sure it's 2018. Because the clickers stopped working.

[00:27:58] We had to go to paper ballots, and that was a huge, huge issue at that point. But to Michael's point, the campaigns did end up having a say in how this was done after they were able to reboot it. But more importantly, before the party releases every single one of these results, they make sure to bring the campaigns in and are like, hey, here are the results that we've gotten. Do you have any issues?

[00:28:26] Clearly, folks must have been fine if they're releasing these totals and these results at the study clip that they were doing after the reboot had taken place. But also the delegates made the choice because there were multiple motions on the floor throughout both Friday and Saturday to consider paper balloting, to get rid of the electronic clickers. And the delegates overwhelmingly voted to continue moving forward with the clickers.

[00:28:56] So, I mean, at some point after they were able to reboot and get the system back on track, even after that, the delegates still made the decision to move forward with the electronic clickers. So they had, the majority of them clearly had enough confidence that the process was working fine to move forward that way because they had the option to go to paper ballots if they chose to, and they didn't.

[00:29:21] And now I got to play, this is where I'm playing a little bit as devil's advocate as well because I, I just have, I have a lot of questions about this. I hear the fact of they didn't ask for the credentials report. Totally get that. My thought there is, though, when after, there's a million things going, and in my experience, they're told the totals before they go on stage. I don't necessarily know if they're asked if they have any issues with it. So I feel like that team took in the fifth ballot, went back,

[00:29:50] were starting their lit drop and, you know, show before the sixth ballot, and then realized, hey, something odd is here. And so I feel like that they didn't speak up earlier because there wasn't concerns earlier. That's just my take from an outsider perspective. I also think I don't necessarily disagree with the fact that this changed anything. I think, you know, we saw the trend. I think it was a lot of people thought QALS was going to come out. So I'm not advocating for the fact that I think that there was necessarily an ultimate change in that.

[00:30:20] I think one thing that this, the questions that this all leads to me is, I mean, we're at the issue of, we're coming back to what we've talked about for months and months and months and again, kind of like the trust and confidence in things, right? So we know that this is a big issue in general. We see this outcome come out. We know that it was really fiery between the candidates. They're throwing some stuff around, around the fifth and sixth ballot when they were up on stage. And so some of those irregularities, then with two hours to go,

[00:30:51] if this is kind of just a general question, because I believe you're, I know your guys' answers, but do you think there is a place where, because of this two-hour break that happened after it got really fiery, when we saw QALS take the lead for the first time, delegates at this point, it's, you know, 5, 6 p.m. They've been doing this for a solid like two days straight, really long days. There was a vote to go to paper ballots. They rejected that. They don't want to stay there until midnight again.

[00:31:18] But my question is, do you think there is a place, if you put on my skeptical glasses here, that the two-hour delay and the momentum and delegates saying the dominoes are falling towards QALS, let's just help them fall towards QALS, may have shifted any momentum because of that two-hour? No? Both of you are shaking your head. I kind of reject a little bit this devil's advocate role that you're engaging in. Just, I don't feel this needs to be adversarial.

[00:31:47] I also don't think that I have to be, I think you have to be the one that needs to explain your logic rather than have it be this devil's advocate perspective. I just got to tell you that conventions are traditionally volatile. Yeah. This happens, there is nothing that happened at this convention that I have not seen happen in some way at another convention. Okay. 30 years ago, I was in Duluth for the endorsement.

[00:32:12] It was, we left the convention without there being an endorsed candidate for the first time in modern time for a statewide candidate, it was a Senate race. I was at the party when Pawlenty versus Sullivan, 15, 16 ballots at the XL Energy Center that went late. There is nothing out of the ordinary that happened, I think, at the convention that good political judgment couldn't have resolved at the time.

[00:32:37] I think the smartest thing that the Damath campaign could have done is have there be a dinner break and cool the heads during that time. Because what happened during that two-hour break when people were festering around is Damath went on stage with Wilson and Qualls went on stage. And there was some pretty heated rhetoric, including the Damath campaign going up there right out of Ryan Wilson's mouth and saying, we need to be the party of election integrity. We trust you to figure that out. Okay.

[00:33:06] That's literally what he said on the stage. The delegates heard that and they then, the body, which is a live kind of organic process, they made a decision on how they were going to fix this. And they chose to fix this by sticking with electronic ballots, running tests, and continuing with the endorsement process. And that is the reality. And what I'm pushing back on is that the Damath campaign or any other losing campaign at that

[00:33:35] convention was like on their backs as turtles and that they didn't have a role or an opportunity to fix what was going on. And that's just not reality. And I'm not going to engage in convention election denialism about what campaigns can and can't do. They had a role and they could have spoke up. And it was during those two hours that this convention with Haywire and I think the Damath campaign themselves, they put their faith in the body.

[00:34:04] They raised concerns about the process, but they said, we need to be the party of election integrity. We have faith. You guys need to fix this. The convention spoke. And this is what happens. Now, see, I think I was missing a piece in this when I was watching it or in subsequent conversations because I heard them say or read or saw that they said that election integrity matters. I didn't get that part of saying we have faith in you. We have faith in this process.

[00:34:32] So like that to me does change things a little bit of how I perceive, you know, how they move forward. Do you think this would be a different and you would have a different viewpoint if Damath at that point said, sorry, we don't buy it. We're just walking out right now. I would have respected that decision much more than I respect them today. Okay. Because I got to tell you something and you can go back and look at hours and hours of our podcast episodes and listen to them. And I'll bring it back to the Senate endorsement.

[00:35:01] I think Michelle Tafoy is not a good candidate for the U.S. Senate. But I got to tell you something. She was honest and she came into that convention at Friday and said, I'm not abiding by your endorsement. I'm going to run in the primary. If you listen back to previous podcast episodes that we've done, I have highlighted in the past that only one candidate has ever done that and been successful. And I have said consistently to you, Becky, and that was Mike McFadden. You worked on that campaign. And I've continually said that's the honest approach that I think candidates should take.

[00:35:31] Don't abide actively seek work the floor, try to get it. And if it doesn't pan out, live on to fight another day. Kristen Robbins was honest. I'm not abiding by the endorsement and it cost her where my BS detector is with the Damath Wilson campaign is because here's the reality. Lisa Damath up until the week of the convention said she was going to abide by the endorsement. Since she announced that she was running and over the course of that entire time,

[00:36:00] she had additional access to events, forums, candidate debates, because she had agreed to abide by the endorsement. And she had said that. And so for her to go to the convention that she helped build, that her team had a role in and decided and consistently told the delegates, I'm going to abide by it and got an advantage

[00:36:26] as a candidate to do it, to then have her stand on stage and say, look, I have some concerns about the election. But then have her running mate come up and say to the body, we need to be the party of election integrity. We need to fix it. We have faith that you will fix this. We trust you to fix this. I believe his exact phrase was, we trust you to fix this. And the delegation decided to fix it by continuing with the balloting to testing the clickers and having there be an endorsement.

[00:36:54] And I think anything else from the Damath campaign is nothing but spin, reckless spin and sour grapes. As somebody who has been burned by the endorsement process and seen it for its hand, you know, just two years ago, I think we have to give delegates a little bit more credit. Because remember, like when you are, you are going through the process to become a delegate to state convention. This is, it is not something for the week, right?

[00:37:23] You have to start at caucuses in February. Where you are not only giving up time with your family, with friends, you are spending a lot of money to get to this point where you are spending multiple days at convention, either in Duluth or Rochester, to make this choice. They know it's going to be long days. I mean, for the folks who were on that floor, they spent over $1,000 just to be there for a while. Two days, two and a half days at most.

[00:37:52] I don't know anybody that would spend $1,000 to sit at like a political convention to like choose who your potential next candidate is going to be. It takes something special to do that. And it takes a lot of grit and determination to get there. And so I don't believe that any of those delegates would sit there at 6 p.m. and be like, you know what? I'm bored. I'm tired. Let's just call this a day and like be done. And I think the proof is actually in the pudding because we all made our guesses five to

[00:38:20] seven ballots, eight ballots for Kendall. But if you look at those final couple of ballots, Kendall went from like 55 to like 57 to 59 and a half to 60. Like these were not delegates that were like, okay, I'm going to just throw my hands up and just like give it to Kendall. Like we just want to be done. These weren't delegates who like it took them some time where literally I remember I was texting with a friend of mine who's a delegate on ballot nine and he sends me the screenshot. He's like 59 and a half.

[00:38:50] And I'm like, why? We just get to 60 already. And I'm sitting in my home saying that. So I think the delegates were being very thoughtful in their choices to get us to the endorsement process. Let's not get too ahead of ourselves. At least for this piece, like this is not just like throwing the baby out with the bathwater because we're tired sort of deal. This is them taking their role seriously regardless of whether we think it's right or wrong. That's a good point.

[00:39:20] I think too, the other thing that we have to remember is that there were multiple campaigns. I had heard rumors that it was Lindell and Damon's team that were going into convention looking to push for a no endorsement. And why would you go ahead and push for a no endorsement and like have that telegraph to the point where like I'm hearing about it and I'm not going places. But you're having that telegraph and like reporters are hearing about it.

[00:39:49] Like other folks are hearing, delegates are hearing about it. This is being telegraphed that folks are going into no endorsement the week of convention. Why are you pushing for a no endorsement if you already have plans to win? And so that just tells me right off the bat that there were folks who knew that there was a likelihood that they were not going to come away from convention weekend with the endorsement. And so they were planning exit strategies to try to make sure that they were on the ballot for August.

[00:40:17] And so now to come out and say this one anomaly is the sole reason why like the endorsement was not, I'm sorry, but there is nothing like, look, Becky, you worked for the state party. I've worked for the state party. Michael, you worked for the state party back when it was good and like actually had something to offer. But who wants, here's my big question. Who in their right mind wants to actually steal the endorsement from the MNGOP?

[00:40:43] What resources is the state party going to be offering these candidates that you being well funded can't afford on them? Like, I'm sorry, but like that is the thing that boggles my mind because I cannot think of a single thing that the state party is offering or has offered over the last few years that is significant enough for someone to try to engineer a way to like steal an endorsement away from another candidate.

[00:41:14] But the other thing that also I think really annoys me is that by taking this tact of saying the clickers are broken, like this was like stolen from us, you know, this is an election integrity issue. We are having folks who have genuinely built up solid credibility for doing the right conservative things who are now giving credence to folks who have been bad actors within our party.

[00:41:41] We are now giving credence to the Mike Lindell and the Royce Whites of the world who've been parroting this message for God knows how long. And now you have people with actual credibility supporting them and giving them more steam than they need. And from my perspective of being like a principled person, that's the thing that annoys me the most out of all of this. So you're along the same lines kind of of with the party's resources and stuff that that if she didn't think she could get it, she should have just said she was not going to abide by it.

[00:42:11] Yeah, a hundred percent. I want to shift into the aftermath of what's happened since the convention adjourned. So as we said, eighth, ninth and tenth ballots, quals creeped up, got over that 60 percent at the tenth ballot. Everybody packed up and went home. And then on Monday, we get a statement from the MNGOP chair, Alex Plekish, saying essentially convention was chaotic. Voting problems created concerns. Candidates should be released from any expectation of abiding by the endorsement and Republicans

[00:42:40] should focus on beating Democrats. How what level of shocked were you by this, Michael? Well, first of all, let me just and Becky, I really appreciate how you're laying this out. I just want to say to put a bow on, I think what happened at the convention is that I think that. Day myth came in with 31, 32 percent as the day developed and candidates dropped quals his coalition continue to build.

[00:43:09] I think the fact that no candidate got out of the race that I'm aware of and ever endorsed damas campaign, I think is one of the most significant points that is not getting enough attention is that Lisa damas campaign did not, did not build. I think the coalition needed to get to 60 percent. And again, she committed to that process.

[00:43:36] I questioned if you listen to the archives of this podcast. I said it was a mistake for these candidates to abide, but she agreed to abide by it. And so I just wanted to put a little cap on the convention that I think the reason why she got she did not get endorsed is because the clicker controversy or anomaly, whatever you want to call it, I don't think changes what occurred at the convention. I think it may have delayed it a bit, but I don't think it changed the coalition that

[00:44:05] quals was building. You can follow up and ask me at a later point if I'm happy that he got endorsed or anything like that, but my job on this podcast is to give the break this down in the best way that I can and have the best kind of break it down and then come in with spin. If I need to breaking it down, that's what I think happened. I think that Damon had 31, 32% on the straw ballot night. I think we went through the endorsement process as pray laid out.

[00:44:34] She did not win quals one consistently. The number of straw ballots that were held across the state came to the convention. As candidate and candidate dropped off, the quals coalition beginning to continue to build. That would lead to the endorsement. You come into Monday and the chairman of the party threw an absolute monkey wrench into the process. And it was just a cataclysmic mistake on his part. Anyone who was involved in drafting that statement.

[00:45:03] Thank you for that recap, because I also think one thing that to me, and I think this is maybe just my issues and ultimate skeptic when watching this all unfold on Saturday. I think a big key was the explanations that were coming out for me, that it was a lot of, I think we fixed it. I think we found it. I believe we did this.

[00:45:27] We, it wasn't a very great explanation of there was a problem. It has been rebooted. We are confident is fixed. I am going out. The irregularities and anomalies along with those, I think, and I believe to me didn't leave me with confidence moving forward. That was the issue. And I think that's where I come and I get it. I'm along the same lines.

[00:45:52] I think that had there been a better front of this, I think a lot of this could be addressed or a lot of this would not be a factor. I think that this will be one of the last times that there is a legislator who chairs a convention. We're saving Fitzsimmons when you need him. Amen. But also I think that like, look, like this weekend and to your point, like the way they chose to communicate was, they did not communicate in confidence.

[00:46:20] But I also think that was just the, it's what we're seeing as a masterclass on how not to communicate. I think the last four to five days from MNGOP is literally everything you should not be doing when it comes to communication. Because to your point, Becky, like Monday was just as bad. And then yesterday was not great. And this morning was not great. And the communication just keeps worse, getting worse. And I'm kind of like, please stop talking.

[00:46:50] Like, please just stop sending press releases. Shut up. Shut down your social media. Everybody just needs to go home because you clearly do not know how to communicate anymore. So absolutely. So like I said, Monday, the chair said that, which I think it was noted at the end of the convention. And just to give it some that Lisa Damuth did not concede, did not say congratulations to Quall. So this was obviously, you know, there was a behind the scenes conversation, obviously,

[00:47:20] of how they were going to move forward. So we have that on Monday. We have the executive committee of the MNGOP has now pushed back publicly. Their argument is that the chair does not have the authority to unilaterally change party rules, but they cannot release the candidates from their endorsement obligations. Convention delegates made a decision. The endorsement still matters. To which we got another statement from MNGOP chair saying, whoa, well, maybe I wasn't clear. I also believe that the endorsement is valid. That is what it was.

[00:47:49] I was just saying that because there was maybe a confidence issue, that's why I was explaining. But we uphold the endorsement, especially on Friday night, but also on Saturday. I mean, it's just somebody needs to take the computers. So frustrating. That's all I'm going to say. I'm going to I will just say this to both of you, that if either of you had been staff on a campaign or working at the state party, I don't think nine of these 10 problems would have ever happened.

[00:48:19] And so ultimately, I blame you both. But I don't think they would have happened. And I and Becky, honestly, I think and my only reason for a little bit of pushback is because I think Becky share, Becky, Allery and Prea. These problems that we're discussing simply wouldn't have happened. I mean, there were paper ballots and this type of communication mess. And what we're left with right now is potentially one of the worst state conventions that has ever happened.

[00:48:48] There is more infighting and sniping at each other than we've had before. And if Becky, if you remember going back to the Will Davis discussion that we had, I said, look, what I'm going to be looking for is who comes out of the convention united and the Democrats. Again, it's a it's not an apples to apples comparison. The Democrats traditionally have some type of primary issue that they're dealing with.

[00:49:15] I know that the Republicans love the infighting that happens on their side, but they're much better at managing that infighting and dealing with it. And there's no electoral history in modern times of the Democrats having a contested primary and then not regrouping for the general election. Whereas the Republican convention is fighting at levels we've never seen before. And it is an absolute food fight.

[00:49:43] And I don't think that there's any basis to think or any history on the side based on some of the rhetoric and the statements that have been said and the misstatements from the party to think that this coalition is going to stay together once the primary is over. Fair. I think both very fair points from both of you. I want to chat just a little bit about this, the party structure and statements that we've gotten.

[00:50:10] I am confused and concerned and a little bewildered by any chair thinking that they can make any such decision without at least the executive committee, if not a larger body to to make that decision he made on Monday. I mean, you need the executive committee to do almost anything at the very least when it comes to moving beyond rules or bylaws or anything of that sort, let alone probably to actually do that.

[00:50:39] You need a delegation, a state central or state convention delegation. You are correct. So that is just I don't know the people who were involved in that decision making, but like. Very questionable of how they received achieved that decision and decided to do so without executive committee. Also surprising that it took three days for the executive committee to to move on this and didn't come back.

[00:51:08] But wow, that just like was bonkers to me. But we also heard earlier this week that the MNGOP Lincoln Reagan. I'm going to come back to Damath running in a primary in a second, but I just want to couple these two together. The Republican Party of Minnesota's largest annual fundraiser, the Lincoln Reagan dinner, was scheduled for this weekend. It was announced that this is postponed due to, I think, scheduling conflicts or something that it came up. Now, this is a dinner that usually hundreds of people go to. There's a silent auction or a live auction. And I've been there.

[00:51:38] I've had my my role in participating, planning these. It's a lot of work and a lot of money. And just Glenn Youngkin was going to be in town to be the speaker. From your guys' skeptical positions, from my watching of this and reading of this, we knew going into it donors wanted a more electable candidate to come out of this.

[00:52:03] They wanted, from what we were hearing, Lisa Damath to come out and to be the candidate going forward. Do you think that this was the statement on Monday and the delay of the Lincoln Reagan dinner, which is now delayed until after the primary? Do you think that's because of donor pressure on MNGOP chair? Not at all. Really? I'd like to push back a little bit on your basis to say that the donor community wanted Damath. Just to put a reminder on you on something.

[00:52:32] Damath was out-fundraised by Mike Lindell. And Klobuchar had a 22 times percentage lead over Damath. So I'm curious. I don't think there's any, quote unquote, monolithic donor support that the Damath campaign has lined up in. You can make that statement with any metric that makes it accurate. I just see that as an anecdote in a number of different social media and articles.

[00:52:59] And so that's kind of where I was gathering that was potentially the mean. What would you guys attribute those to? Are they just completely unrelated coincidences that they both happened? Or is there something going on behind the scenes of being anti-QALs or being pro-Damath or anything? I'm sorry. Your argument is, is that the Lincoln-Reagan dinner was canceled because Lisa Damath wasn't endorsed? Those are the rumors that have been like being put or that are being pushed out there currently. Yeah.

[00:53:29] What I've seen, and this is where, again, I have seen and heard and on social media is that because folks maybe changed their mind that came out of this endorsement with Kendall Qualls as the endorsed candidate. And folks were maybe not wanting to go to the Lincoln-Reagan dinner and write their checks for him. So they pushed it to beyond the primary so that if when they write their checks to the state party, it is going to be supporting the primary winner, not the endorsement winner, which could then at that point be Lisa Damath.

[00:54:00] You know, by that. I'm really struggling with your line of thinking there. Sure. I'm, and I'm. To me, it makes perfect sense. To me, you're full of shit. But that's my. Hey, when I was watching your tweets, I told you, I told you, Michael, you could call out my BS. So this is, this is very appropriate because we're very clearly on, have different mind tracks on this. But, but what's your basis for that? What's your, why would you think that they put out that statement on Monday and then also move the Lincoln-Reagan dinner?

[00:54:28] You think they are completely unrelated, genuinely a scheduling conflict, nothing else going on behind the curtain for them. You have to pick a lane. Either the party is limber and can move quickly and can do things or, or it's, it's all a mess. And I don't think that the Lincoln-Reagan dinner was canceled because Lisa Damath wasn't endorsed. And I think that that is a very loaded statement to make without having anything to back it up.

[00:54:58] I don't have anything to back it up other than what I'm hearing and seeing through nudist articles, through social media, through other people's anecdotes. And so that's where I'm saying to me, that makes sense. Do you have, so I'm, I guess I'm just, so if you guys think that it was genuinely a scheduling conflict, that is fair. I'm not the one that made, I'm not the one that made the statement that this was canceled because of Lisa Damath not getting the endorsement. You did. So you have a responsibility to back up your statement.

[00:55:27] I don't have a responsibility to just prove it. I'll jump in here. So I agree with Michael. I don't think that it was a quote unquote scheduling conflict. I also don't think that it was any donor issues. And here's the reason why. Bucky, like you and I have like lived through this in like recent memory. We know how long it takes to plan. We know how much work goes into pushing people to buy tickets, to buy tables, to do all these

[00:55:55] things, to set up the live auctions, get the auction stuff. This is not like something that happens. It's not quick and dirty. It's not quick, dirty and easy. Like it takes time. It takes planning. It takes commitment. Like you are doing a lot of work. I remember when I was working at the state party, I was probably tweeting about getting your Lincoln Reagan tickets like three times a week. No less. Like I was coming with new and creative ways to make sure that people are signing up and getting their tickets. We're sending emails out. We were doing all of the things.

[00:56:24] I had somebody call me. I had a reporter call me and say, hey, do you know anything about this Lincoln Reagan dinner? I was like, what Lincoln Reagan dinner? Because I hadn't seen anything. I barely remember seeing the initial like announcement that Glenn Youngkin was going to be there, but they hadn't done anything else. They hadn't been promoting it. They hadn't like been sending things out. There was no communication whatsoever that a Lincoln Reagan dinner was happening. And when I talked to folks a little bit more involved in the party, hadn't heard a thing

[00:56:53] either. So a part of me just wonders like if it kind of fell to the wayside with everything else going on. Doing it the week after the state convention. Also, why do it? Literally, I actually had to ask the reporter. I was like, are you sure it was for this Friday? And she was like, yeah, that's what the announcement said. I was like, what? Literally, like I couldn't help myself. Because the first question out of my mouth was, why would you hold a major fundraiser the

[00:57:20] week after a convention where you literally ask people to pay $200 to get in and spend $1,000 to be a part of convention weekend? Doesn't make any sense. Because the majority of the folks who are going to Lincoln Reagan dinner, they're not your big donors. These are the folks that are buying the $150 seat and are building their seats in the BPOUs. I haven't seen any of the BPOUs or the county parties advertising, hey, we bought a table.

[00:57:49] Please donate to help us fill this in. I haven't seen anything. And so this just makes me feel like they just fell to the wayside. And this is just like an excuse to like not demonstrate just how like completely broken and fallen apart the party is. I think that makes sense. Having it the week after the state convention, I think it was a poor choice to begin with. I think that makes sense. I do have a quote from the Axios, Tori Van Ute, who said several sources familiar with

[00:58:17] the decision to delay the dinner tell Axios that donors' frustration with the endorsement for governor and U.S. Senate played a role in the last minute change of plans, only to validate that I didn't make this up and pull this out of thin air, that this is what I have read and seen a couple different places. And so we can move on. So in between all of this, we have Damath actually have her press conference announce that she is going to be running in the primary. You know, and we talked about this a little bit last week.

[00:58:43] I asked if there would be any possibility of quals not abiding or Damath not abiding. And I think it was a unanimous agreement that everybody would abide. So, Michael, my question and NPRIA is we've had lots of conversations about endorsement process broken. It doesn't work. We applauded Kristen Robbins for saying that she was going to a primary and other folks. And we've long been advocating that the endorsement process needs to go away. We are done wanting to endorse folks like a Royce White.

[00:59:10] And we should go towards a primary and, you know, if I'm going to pitch it, a June primary. But that's the path of who should be choosing our nominees for the Republican Party of Minnesota to go to the general election. You seem—I want your take on where you fall on that coming out of this convention and why. Well, first of all, let me just say that over the entire annals of this podcast history going on four years,

[00:59:37] I have been very consistent that I think the endorsement process is broken and it needs to be reformed, that I wish every candidate would abide by the—would go to the primary. But what I've also said very consistently is what Mike McFadden did in 2014 is I believe the right approach, which is I'm going to seek, not abide, and then go to the primary. Because I do believe that the delegates, there are hardworking activists in the state,

[01:00:02] and they traditionally have a role in some form of the candidate selection process. I think it's too much. I applaud any candidate who takes that honest approach. I applaud anyone who takes that approach because that, I think, is the right spot. I think that the party needs to move away from this and insist on the endorsement process.

[01:00:25] My frustration with—and again, I'm not trying to be anti-Dameth and Wilson because I want to have a balanced podcast, but this is we're breaking this down, kind of clearing some of this junk up. My frustration is that I think that they absolutely broke the system. They built it up. They insisted on abiding by the endorsement. Lisa Dameth benefited from the endorsement process by saying that she was going to abide by the endorsement

[01:00:52] because there were BPOUs, congressional districts that had forums just for the candidates who were abiding by the endorsement. And the lead-up to the convention, we expressed concern in the podcast about what she's abiding. When originally she got in this race, her statement was very much in line with Kristen Robbins, which is basically, I'm the best candidate, you know, and I'm committed to running in the endorsement and in the primary because that's the process that we have.

[01:01:22] Kristen Robbins took some heat from that. Michelle Tafoya took a lot of heat for not abiding by the endorsement, but they were honest about their positions with the delegates. And what I think the Dameth campaign has done here is that they have used a brief anomaly that occurred at the convention. They have exploited it for political purposes. And despite the assurances from Ryan Wilson at the convention, when he showed on stage and said, we need to be the party of election integrity.

[01:01:51] We trust you to fix this. And they did. They didn't like how they fixed it. So they left the convention. And there was clearly an effort to get the party chairman to issue some form of statement, which he did. And then he had to dial it back. And now Lisa Dameth is out there on under the predicate of the chairman said that we don't have to abide by the endorsement. Therefore I'm not. And now she's running again. And I think she was dishonest.

[01:02:18] I think it is completely an unforced error. If she would have taken the Robbins route, that would have been honest. It would have been direct. And the party would be in a better place today. Her campaign and her inability to win the endorsement, build a necessary coalition, is why she was not endorsed. Not because of some random anomaly that occurred that was fixed, but not the way that she wanted it fixed.

[01:02:47] She wanted there to be no endorsement or her campaign to get endorsement. And guess what? That wasn't in the cards for her. That's where I want to just say I'm not anti-Dameth. What I am is anti-bullshit spin. Priya, where do you stand on the same thing, right? Of somebody like a candidate going and saying, I am going to seek the endorsement but not abide by it and go to a primary versus the situation where it was, I'm going to abide by it and then go to a primary anyways.

[01:03:16] Is that a sticking point for you as well? I think I'm probably in line with Michael on this as well. I have been on this podcast a number of times since the 2024 election. We have talked in depth about the endorsement process and, frankly, how flawed it was back then because we saw the delegates choose Royce White, who, in my opinion, is not a Republican and had no business being in front of that body.

[01:03:46] I have been very open about the entire process from nominations to the actual vote itself. I do agree with you. We should be going to a June primary, primarily because a lot of Minnesota candidates look at the fact that we have an August primary and they're like, we can just hang out and not do anything until the last minute. And then you find yourself having to scramble in like four months before the endorsement process actually kicks in.

[01:04:11] I think the reality is that we all saw the endorsement process fail in 2024. Legislators on both sides had two years to switch us over to a primary system and they chose not to. In fact, they chose to like say, I am going to get in and abide by the endorsement as you have created it and have chosen to maintain it.

[01:04:36] So I think the respect for the Kristen Robinses of the world, for the Michelle Tafoias who are like, you know what, we're going to be honest. We actually don't care about the endorsement. Like we're going straight to the primary because that's where we believe we need to end up. Delegates might not respect that, but I think in the long run, they do respect it, especially in light of what's been happening in the last week, because they were honest about where they were heading.

[01:05:04] Instead, we have the Dameth campaign who, as Michael pointed out, took advantage of everything that came with being a part of the endorsement process. They saw that they weren't going to get what they wanted. They sought to find an exit strategy that worked well for them.

[01:05:20] And when the no endorsement didn't happen, they utilized this one moment of an anomaly that was ultimately fixed to gaslight Republicans across this state into believing that an endorsement was stolen. And again, if we've looked at the state party in the last week, as we've just talked about for the last hour, there is nothing that the state party has done that warrants an endorsement being stolen from anybody.

[01:05:48] And so now we're seeing a campaign that is gaslighting Republicans and is giving credence to the Michael and Dahls and the Royce Whites of the world when it comes to the veracity of party endorsement processes and whether or not clickers are accurate. And I think that they're just taking, they're spinning this and gaslighting in a way that I don't respond.

[01:06:14] I think from a principal standpoint, I would have a lot more respect if they had just came out of the convention and said, you know what? I don't really care for how the delegates voted on this. I don't care for how the weekend went out. So we're just going to go straight to the end. Like, we're going to bypass the endorsement. There's nothing binding about the endorsement. There's nothing the party can do to legally challenge it. There's nothing holding them there. But I would have a lot more respect if they were like, you know what? We just didn't like what happened this weekend. We're going to the primary. Rather than gaslighting and creating a lot of uncertainty.

[01:06:44] Because that uncertainty and that confusion that we're seeing right now is everything normal people hate about politics. And at a time we should be widening our base, like we're like making people feel like they don't have a home here. And that bothers me. It really bothers me. And so this is where also like I kind of had always thought anybody who said that they could abide by the endorsement could come back and say not going to.

[01:07:13] In my mind, it's kind of, you know, it hasn't historically happened. But it to me is not something that was a disqualifier. Because now I want to ask you guys as we move forward. So as we move to the primary, a primary was happening. Mike Lindell was going to run in the primary. As we move forward here, how does this then impact the next three months? How does this coming out of the convention, not abiding, moving forward to a primary, what are you guys hearing? What do you think?

[01:07:41] What do you believe this will do to the race for governor with these three candidates in the race? I'm going to answer your question, but with a little bit of a different trajectory. You and I have spoken, Becky, at length about the concept of election denialism. We had an episode with Secretary Steve Simon. One thing that I think you and I have always been, I'm puzzled by.

[01:08:06] And which is Lindell's campaign had signs pre-made that said Mike was right. And the belief is that they were made about the problems with electronic clickers. And so to me, they knew based on the history of clickers that they sometimes don't work. And this election, my concern is that the misstatements from the party, coupled with gaslighting from the Damath campaign,

[01:08:36] coupled with an electorate that is predisposed to think that Donald Trump is going to build the wall and that Mexico is going to pay for it and not grounded in reality. That election denialism is going to metastasize and consume this party like a cancer. And does Mike Lindell win? Does Lisa Damath win? Does Kendall Qualls win?

[01:09:02] I don't know that it really matters because functionally, the governor's race is over with. And I think the problem that Republicans are going to have is, will this cancer that is growing on the party consume it before Election Day or will it consume it afterwards? But I think that election denialism has become platformed and mainstreamed inside the Republican Party because the Damath campaign didn't like the results of the convention.

[01:09:30] Who do you think will be, I mean, I certainly understand those concerns. I think they're valid. This is something we've talked about plenty of times. We just saw President Trump again this week say that he won the election. So it's clearly something that is an ongoing thing. Do you think that's something that Qualls is going to, Qualls and Lindell are going to jump on messaging-wise and try to push out? Do you think it will be from the Democrats or all of the above? I don't know. Praya, what do you think?

[01:10:00] I think the Democrats are going to amplify the fact that we've got Republicans' credibility saying that an endorsement process was stolen from them and are going to try to utilize that to point into these fears from independents and Democrats that I've just seen polling from who believe that democracy is on the ballot this year. Democrats in a midterm election always think that democracy is on the ballot, but I think this just feeds into it.

[01:10:28] I think from, if we're talking about our primary, we very well could see the Republican nominee for the general election be chosen by like 30-something percent of the vote, to be quite honest with you. I think, to Michael's point, the credibility that is being given to Mike Lindell and that wing of the party right now by folks with more credibility,

[01:11:01] is going to be more than 50-something percent of the votes that we've got to be voted for. And so I really do think that this is up in the air at this point. I do think that there is a little bit of the endorsement just baked in to Kendall that gives him a little bit of an edge,

[01:11:26] because as we know, the party hasn't chosen a candidate that hasn't been endorsed by the body 1990. We obviously witnessed that with very flawed candidates like Race White in 2024. But I do think that there is some of that just kind of natural edge just baked in for Kendall. But honestly, I can say that it's going to be bloody and it's going to be terrible. And the outcome is going to be decided by a small group of folks.

[01:11:55] Becky, I mean, are you of the opinion that the Daymuth campaign had the endorsement stolen from them? No. I think, though, from my perspective, that there were issues with the voting system. That was made clear. I don't think that I came out of that with confidence that it had been fixed. I completely hear your point of the time to have your issues.

[01:12:22] And when they said they were dealing with the candidates, you know, whether that was leaving or mandating paper ballots, or I don't know what could have been done. I completely understand that. I think, for me, you know, there was the shift to Qualls and then two hours. And I think there was a momentum, you know, potential shift. Anything that Lisa had been getting was potentially, you know, shifted towards Qualls. And that's where it moved forward.

[01:12:48] But I think your point of moving on with the endorsement process, I hear it. I get it. But when you talk about momentum shifts and things like that, that happens all the time at conventions. Right. And so, but it seems to me that you're bringing it up as if it's a conspiracy. I don't mean to. I think that had, again, had they come back after that sixth ballot that they fixed it, a lot of confidence in there. I would point to that as momentum shift that shifted to Qualls. And that's where he came out.

[01:13:18] I don't mean that in a conspiracy theory way. I mean that there was a heated situation going on. A ballot came out where Qualls was ahead. We had two hours where they were whipping votes and dropping lit and all of that. And it continued to move in that direction. I don't have the ultimate confidence just because I, again, I don't like the messaging that came out from the state, the chair at the convention, from the state party afterwards.

[01:13:43] I feel like it's a bunch of mush that doesn't allow me to feel super strong on what they were saying and believing and seeing and hearing. But no, I ultimately, from my perspective, Qualls won the endorsement and Lisa is choosing to go to a primary. And that's, it's the question in there of the election denialism, which hadn't really been the top of my mind. Like, clearly, it was the top of your guys' coming through that.

[01:14:12] And I just, I think it's important that I think you both understand that I believe very passionately that election denialism, the inability to see facts in front of us, is one of the greatest threats to our democratic institutions.

[01:14:32] And my frustration about that, and as this podcast has gone on, my frustration with some of this discussion has been because I feel like we're accepting some of that stuff. And I think that truly, I want you both to know that I think that it should not surprise anyone that clickers break. That's why they weren't used in 22.

[01:14:58] But, and there was issues that the 18 convention, I believe that a lot of things can exist in the same kind of space. I think that Dameth came in not getting with not the amount to get endorsed. I think the most significant event that happened that day, aside from the anomaly, was the fourth ballot. And during that time, after the fourth ballot, leading up to the fifth, so let's just make sure we're clear.

[01:15:25] So the fourth ballot was when Lindell got dropped after the fourth ballot, correct? Right. So during that time, I went back and looked at my texts. And the question that I was getting the most from people when I was at a family function was, where do Lindell's votes go? And that to me was the most significant thing that happened.

[01:15:47] And in my head, looking at the votes and the conversations is that Mike Lindell had those votes, and where would they go? Logically, they were going to go to someplace. And the text that I wrote contemporaneously before the balloting issues was, they will go to quals. But the question is, in what percentage?

[01:16:08] And the math shows that independent of the vote anomaly, that when Mike Lindell got out, this shifted to quals, started to pick up momentum. That's what naturally happens at conventions. I don't assign that to a conspiracy theory. That's, to me, that is logical.

[01:16:30] And again, the other point I would say is, I don't know how Lisa Dameth peaked at the most that she had was, the most counted, I think, was she had roughly 42, maybe 46%, depending on which ballots were counted. That's not enough to get, that's not enough to get endorsed. Right. And the bottom line is the math wasn't, the math wasn't mathing. And I, oh, go ahead.

[01:16:57] And that's where I think my frustration is what I've seen the party perpetrate. I've seen what the Dameth campaign perpetrate is this spin. And I think we can have a conversation about problems at the convention. But I think where we need to be better, I'd like to think that we're better is not conveying that those anomalies changed the other results that were there. And that's my frustration. 100% heard.

[01:17:24] Let me try to clarify my thoughts on this situation. Lindell had said verbally, out loud, in the press, other places, to delegates, that he would rather no endorsement than Lisa Dameth endorsement. So it was very clear that he did not, if he was going to be throwing, trying to get his delegates to throw their vote somewhere else, it would not be behind her. So that, to me, like your point on that, they did, you know, shift in large quantities to Kendall Qualls.

[01:17:54] I am not trying to question the overall validity. I think I look at this two different ways. As a former, you know, spending 10 years in on campaigns and doing this post spin, I think that I don't disagree that the Dameth campaign saw this, you know, little crinkle of confusion and discrepancies to be the reason that she ran to the primary.

[01:18:21] Had there not been any vote discrepancies, it would not have surprised me if she came out of this endorsement and said, I am going to go to a primary. I thought, that's why I asked the question on last week's, do you think there is a place where a Qualls or Dameth don't abide? And because I thought there was always that possibility. I am with you guys. I think the campaigns are doing the spin that you do because they're not just going to come out and say, we don't have the support. We're going to do this.

[01:18:49] It's, they're using it to their advantage to be the reason that they are moving forward and going to now go forward and seeking that. They're spending now, you know, and I think they're have, are working to trip up Qualls to focus on, you know, his week after his big win has now been sampled, you know, trampled all over. He's still talking about the endorsement versus his, you know, what normally is like a victory tour around the state and all of that.

[01:19:16] So I think that from my perspective, I thought this was always a possibility that Lisa Dameth would seek to go to a primary after the fact. And I do agree that they are jumping on the bandwagon that was presented in front of them in this situation. So I want to make it very clear. I'm not trying to say that I believe this was stolen, that there was anything.

[01:19:38] My comment about that break and the momentum shift is, to your point, strictly what happens in these conventions that I think it allowed that Qualls flip into the first place position to then continue forward. I'm not saying, I mean, we've seen it in different places. In 22, we saw Qualls come up and Qualls go back down. You see candidates move all over the place. I don't think the endorsement was stolen. That's not my case. I think that this was going to go to a primary.

[01:20:07] And I just am on the side of applauding that it's going to a primary. And I think that's the significant disagreement we have. To me, the abide and then changing your mind, I don't know that voters, aside from, here's what I'm going to say. The election denialism side of messaging really has not been in my top three coming out of this convention until this conversation with you guys. I've seen it. I think it's ironic.

[01:20:35] I think it's, you know, this is why we can't have nice things. To me, voters don't really understand the endorsement. They don't really understand what abiding by the endorsement, what a promise, a pledge, this whole thing is. So to me, that was just a non-factor. And that's where I came into this thinking. She's going to the primary. I applaud it. I think that she has a better chance of coming out of the primary successful than her other candidates. And time will tell in that situation.

[01:21:01] But very clearly, we all looked at the facts and the situation and the post spin very differently coming out of this. And again, that's the election denial just truly wasn't the top of my radar. Like, very evidently, it was on the top of yours.

[01:21:17] Well, and when the fact that Speaker Damath and Ryan Wilson may have broken their pledges on an intramural party event, but when the DFL starts to message on that, the fact that they broke their pledge, that becomes fair game in the process. And the fact that the chairman of the party, Damath, used that, his statement as a basis to which to break her pledge. She didn't have to break her pledge. She doesn't get a permission slip to do that. And that matter is going to be litigated by the voters.

[01:21:45] And she's going to start this campaign off if she wins the primary in a deficit when it comes to matters of keeping her word. That's going to be a fair issue that's going to be litigated. Coupled with, she's going to have created this election denialism monster that I don't think they can now control anymore. And this dynamic is just sad and unfortunate. Yeah. And the party's toast. Yeah.

[01:22:16] I mean, and that's where just to, if that's what the DFL wants to spend their time talking about, I think that there's also, I would, it's not apples to apples, right? Because we know that Klobuchar has 3.5 million cash on hand to. She has a lot more than that now. Well, yeah, that was at the end of quarter one, right? Very much different of who has the money to push what messaging.

[01:22:38] I just think that if that's what, I don't feel like it as though that moves as much as other things that you could pounce on Republicans for saying and or doing or voting on. And so to me, that was just like, I don't feel, I feel differently that in the primary, the broken promise to abide by the endorsement is the factor. Do you know why the Democrats will likely bring it up? Because it will remind the Republicans that Dameth broke her pledge.

[01:23:07] It is a great way to keep the infighting going. It is a great way to keep the fighting going and reminding Republican delegates. Because one of the great ways to win an election is to suppress the enthusiasm of your opponent. And if the DFL is reminding Republican voters throughout the election cycle that Lisa Dameth for months told them that she was going to abide and then didn't,

[01:23:30] that is going to be a very targeted message that will reap tremendous benefits for them in an election cycle that the wins were already benefiting them. But do you think that it, I mean, beyond the 2000 delegates, you think that's going to be an impactful message? Yes. And let me tell you something, Republicans need 2000 delegates out there pounding signs and doing stuff. It is a, that's the reality here. And it goes back consistently. This isn't a Dameth point I'm making.

[01:23:58] It goes back to what I said last week's episode, Becky, which was how were Republicans going to leave this convention? I was even trying to figure out who was going to leave this convention. And if there is a family food fight that goes on between now and election day about election denialism, who won, who broke their word, and it's all on Republican turf, that is such a benefit to the Democrats.

[01:24:21] And that has been delivered by this election denialism and the doublespeak by Lisa Dameth and her campaign. And I think you have to remember, too, like, historically, like, again, we haven't chosen a non-endorsed candidate in 30 years. And why is that? Because, one, the same primary voters come out every four years to vote. Our primary base in August is significantly smaller than that of the DFLs.

[01:24:48] And that's why, like, their voters are able to moderate and pull them back. And that's why they don't adhere to the endorsement as much. But all of our primary voters are the folks that are paying attention. They might not be delegates, but they're tuned in and they're paying attention to what's going on. And so if they are seeing this message of, well, the convention delegates are already split 50-50 because half of them were on Team Dameth and half of them were on Team Qualls. And abide by the endorsement or don't, she broke her promise, he kept his.

[01:25:18] That's going to be the message that's going to be telegrammed, tuned in, like, ready to go. And so that's where I think that Lindell actually is, with the election integrity message, where I think Lindell is going to, does have a path to sneak through. Because Democrats will be creating that wedge.

[01:25:41] So, to me, also, though, one of my big issues coming out of this convention, and if I was Team Dameth or just others, Qualls sat up on stage and bashed the St. Paul Swamp, bashed the end-of-session ruling, you know, did a lot of that messaging to me, which we talked about this on a few weeks ago, that I was hopeful and wanted to be optimistic that folks trying to stick it to Dameth didn't do that because we have every single Republican legislator on the ballot this upcoming time.

[01:26:11] That, to me, is something that I expect to be a very top-of-line messaging, that the endorsed M&GOP candidate just shit all over the other endorsed candidates. And he wants to go there and be the messenger, but he just thought that the end-of-session deal that all of our Republicans who are up for grabs, who are hopefully trying to avoid a Democrat trifecta, the sitting endorsed gubernatorial candidate disagrees with all of them?

[01:26:40] Everybody who voted for that, like, that, to me, I've also heard that there, you know, now we have the candidates who are not sitting electeds are on Qualls' side, and the other ones are going to be on Dameth's sides because they don't, they look at Qualls and they're like, you just poo-pooed over everything we stand for and voted for and how what we have to run on for the next three to five months. That, to me, is something that needs to be, that is going to be an argument here as we head through the primary. So I think that can be fixed, though.

[01:27:10] I think you can just say, look, like, I didn't agree with what they did, but, like, when I'm governor, like, we're going to do all of these things, and, like, together we're going to, like, deliver actual wins for, like, Republicans. I think you can easily— I appreciate your thoughtful messaging hat on there. I don't have as much grace and confidence. I will say to both of you that I think this episode has shown that the system is broken.

[01:27:37] And that, Becky, you had very precisely and in a Nostradamus-like way had predicted what, that from a messaging standpoint, what was going to happen at this convention. And I guess my point that I'm trying to say here is, independent of some of the claims about stuff that's going on, the system is broken. And how do you fix the broken system?

[01:28:03] I think you fix the broken system by acknowledging it's broken at the onset. And now this is the convention that we're left at. I realized something, and it almost stopped me cold this week. I will be 60 fucking years old by the next time that there's a competitive governor's race in this state. I'm too old for this. And so I'm looking to the younger generation, and specifically you two, to help. And I'm going to put this a little bit on your shoulders.

[01:28:31] You guys need to get back in this game more. Because this, and to agree with you can, because that's the only hope that I have from this. Is I come on this episode, and I think about the last four years of doing a podcast with Becky. I know where she's at. And the conversations that we've had with Craig. Doesn't mean we're going to agree all the time. But I got to tell you, this convention screams to me that we need a better element of operatives in this state back in the game.

[01:29:00] And that's where I think you two need to start. Becky, what have we dreamed in our offices next to each other in 2018 of working for corporations that would pay us three times what we made? You're begging us to go back in. I don't want my approach to this conversation, my demeanor at all, my frustration, to be anything else other than this. I abhor election denialism, and I think that it's now going to metastasize the party in a much greater way.

[01:29:27] That's where my frustration is, and I hope that you two, when I'm maybe in the nursing home eating soft food, that you two are going to be kicking ass and winning statewide elections again. I appreciate that boat of confidence, Michael. And I just wanted to—my last comments on this are, I think that this is what's fascinating having this podcast is because we all were not there.

[01:29:52] We all watched, read, heard, had conversations, got feedback. And, I mean, very clearly, I'm the odd man out on some of my thoughts here. But all took different kind of things from everything. And I just—I think it's fascinating that you guys fell very hard on the election denialism, which, again, was just really—I was just going towards,

[01:30:15] I want the candidate to go to the endorse—or the primary that has the best chance of winning, which, in my mind, when we look at this field, is Lisa Damath. And so that, to me, is just where my mind went. She's going to a primary. I thought it was possible before. They took advantage of this, and they're going to their primary and moving forward. And so I think it is just, again, none of us were there, and all of us came out thinking and feeling a little bit differently about things.

[01:30:41] So I appreciate this conversation, even though I know some of my comments and thoughts maybe pissed you off a little bit. But that's what's fun about this, right, is that we can have a good conversation about things. And I learned from you guys of why you feel the way you feel and where that rub really was. Because, again, I know we all agree that the process is broken, and we all agree that something either needs to be scrapped or changed or fixed or overhauled or whatever we want to look at it.

[01:31:08] And it's just different factors that raise to the top of our radar and our thoughts when going through that. So I appreciate the conversation. I appreciate your guys' input. We now get to turn towards the primary where we have another three, two—oh, my God, like two and a half months, not even, two months until the primary is going to be here. And it's going to get dirty, potentially on both sides, and we'll be here to cover it. And I'm excited. But thank you guys for your conversation and dealing with my thoughts.

[01:31:39] I think early voting starts this month. Oh, my God. I know. I think, yes. 45 days? Yeah. Yeah. I want to just say how much I respect you both. Becky, we've been doing this for four years, and I have the utmost respect for you, your judgment, your perspectives. You've called all my BS before, and we're going to continue to do that sometimes. And I just want to thank you and pray, as always. Appreciate your insight, your perspective.

[01:32:05] And our listeners, I want to thank you guys for joining us for this very animated episode of The Breakdown with Broad, Corbin, Becky. Before you go, show some love for your favorite podcast by leaving us for you on Apple Podcasts or on the platform where you listen. You can also follow us on our website and across all social media platforms at BBBreakPod. The Breakdown with Broad, Corbin, Becky will be back next week. I hope we'll see you then. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.