[caption id="attachment_12332" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="City attorney Tom Carr casts his vote at the 34th in July."][/caption]

I've done more reporting on the story about the bizarre internecine conflict over the 34th District Democrats' endorsements from today's Morning Fizz.

As we reported this morning, the group's executive board voted last night to scrap and revisit their primary-election endorsements in the general election—the first time they've done so, their parliamentarian says, in the organization's history. Those endorsements are all over the map:  a dual endorsement for Mayor Greg Nickels and challenger Mike McGinn; a dual endorsement for Position 2 incumbent Richard Conlin and challenger David Ginsberg; a dual endorsement for Position 4 candidates Dorsol Plants and Sally Bagshaw; a dual endorsement for Position 6 incumbent Nick Licata and challenger Jessie Israel; and a dual endorsement for Position 8 candidates David Miller and Robert Rosencrantz. (Whew!)

The simplest (and most obvious) solution here would be to simply endorse the candidates who made it through the primary—which, in fact, is what the district has always done in the past.

For example, if they issued a dual endorsement for two candidates and only one made it through the primary, that candidate would receive the sole endorsement in the general. Specifically, under the old rules, the district would have endorsed either McGinn or McGinn and Nickels (depending on whether Nickels goes through); Conlin and Ginsberg; Bagshaw; Licata and Israel; and Rosencrantz.

Last night's decision changed all that. Now candidates will have to make the case for themselves in front of the district again—a laborious process that, under new rules adopted earlier this year, involves a nomination, a second, speakers for and against, and three separately counted votes.

Supporters of the move to revisit the endorsements give different reasons for the decision.

Tim Nuse, head of the district, says the decision was made, in part, because it struck some on the board as unfair to endorse McGinn (assuming Nickels doesn't make it through), given that he only won 36 percent of the initial vote.

"Mike McGinn did not get two-thirds of the vote on his own right," Nuse says. "We've got a lot of members who supported Nickels and stayed 'til midnight so they could at least vote for a dual. "In the case of the mayor, 64 percent of our members voted for Greg Nickels, and we decided it's part of the process of democracy to give people a voice" in that situation.

Nuse also cites the "top two" primary, in which the top two candidates go through regardless of party. However, given that all the races on this year's ballot are nonpartisan, that explanation doesn't exactly account for why the group decided to revisit endorsements this year.

Parliamentarian Stephen Lamphear, one of three executive board members to vote againset last night's motion, says he recalls various board members making the pitch candidates they believe should receive a sole endorsement in the general; specifically, he says board members expressed support for Israel, Mallahan, Bloom, and Ginsberg.

"I said, 'Well, wait a minute—you're upset that your process didn't get you what you wanted,'" Lamphear says. "But once you're endorsed, you're endorsed. I said, 'This is a credibility issue.' ... You can't have two separate processes. It's not fair to candidates."

District membership chair Jeff Upthegrove says he doesn't recall any discussion of specific candidates at last night's meeting, and says the discussion was about "how to interpret the new rules" adopted in May, not whether the group should revisit its specific endorsements. "We're stuck with the ... crappy rules adopted earlier this year. It was our least bad option." (Lamphear, who has been with the district about 15 years, disagrees, saying the rules "didn't change that much.")

Upthegrove says "Nobody wanted to go back and call these candidates we've already endorsed and say, 'You've got to come back in.' ... That was an unintended consequence."

Unintended or intentional, the result will be that every candidate who wants an endorsement from the 34th District Democrats—including Dow Constantine and Tom Carr, who received sole endorsements, as well as all the dual-endorsed candidates who made it through the primary—will have to come back in and make their case again. Last time, that process took more than five hours.

And it means that candidates who have already advertised the 34th District endorsement on their literature, web sites, and TV ads can no longer legitimately say they have the district's endorsement. "Do you think people are really going to take that off their literature?" Lamphear asks. "What about Dow—are they saying he can't say he's endorsed anymore?"