This week’s disarray in the D-F-L Party, plus Republicans also facing a primary election battle in the governor’s race, has many wondering whether state political party conventions still have any value. Hamline University analyst David Schultz contends party conventions as a means of choosing candidates are perhaps becoming irrelevant, “but if we still view the conventions as ways to, let us say, recruit a new generation of activists,… perhaps maybe generating some party platform,… they may not be irrelevant.”
Schultz says another way of looking at it, is that the primary election serves as a “check” if party conventions don’t produce options acceptable to voters.