Talk:Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party

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[edit] leaving?

The article says

Several conservative Democratic candidates and officeholders have now left the party, some of them moving to the Independence Party of Minnesota, which considers itself a centrist party; among them are Tim Penny, Peter Hutchinson and Tammy Lee.

The wording in that paragraph seems exaggerated and a bit misleading to me.

• "Several" -- are there any more than the 3 mentioned? And since the DFL runs over 200 candidates in a statewide election -- how many of them makes up several?
• "candidates and officeholders" -- the first 2 mentioned have never been a DFL candidate, as far as I can find. And Tim Penny was a former officeholder; he last ran as DFL 7 years before running in the Independence Party.

I think this paragraph should be re-worded.

T-bonham (talk) 14:12, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

It does seem a little off. The wording seems to exaggerate the importance of these defections and it seems misplaced in general. I'm going to remove it since it seems both inaccurate and not really relevant, given the unimportance of the "Independent Party of Minnesota" and the lack of any mention of former DFLers on that page. As far as I can tell the latter party has no elected officials at the federal or state level and I've find no mention of any elected officials or viable candidates whatsoever. PantsB (talk) 04:04, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] creation

The article says

The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party or (DFL) was created on 1944 April 15 when the Minnesota Democratic Party and Farmer-Labor Party merged to create the DFL. Hubert H. Humphrey was instrumental in this merger.

In the 1970s, some radicals outside MN described HHH as having "kicked out the" radicals [Reds, Communists, don't recall] "in the MN DP", i think as an argument that his VP or Pres candidacy was a sign that DP was not worth radicals supporting it against GOP.
I always presumed that this meant that the range of ideologies of DFL activists who could expect to fully participate was broadened to the left (in '44), relative to pre-DFL DP, and that HHH later helped implement a retreat from that, either purging FL vets from leadership or narrowing a de facto "grandfather clause" to apply only to the "grandfathers" and not to their proteges. Can anyone provide NPoV info on this? (Or even PoV?!)
--Jerzy(t) 20:08, 2004 May 12 (UTC)

I added some further reading references, which might go a ways toward answering Jerzy's questions. No idea if they are online. DJ Silverfish 19:24, 17 May 2005 (UTC)