Mayor Rybak on Dean

R.T. Rybak, the mayor of Minneapolis and the co-chair of Minnesota for Dean, just posted the following letter to the Minnesotans for Dean Yahoo listserv:

“Having been through quite a few political campaigns, I know that sometimes it’s easy to get cynical about this whole strange process. Next time I get that feeling I’m going to try to remember the DFL Central Committee meeting last week because the Dean people there put on one of the least cynical, most uplifting displays of political inspiration I’ve been in a long time. Here we were at another boring political meeting and yet the room was filled with energetic Dean people, a good share of them new to politics. You stayed, you cheered and you illustrated the point Laura Herridge made so well that the Dean campaign has energized a whole new group of people and, in the process, the Democratic Party. As Laura spoke surrounded by a crowded stage of activists, I could see the delegates in the audience beginning to nod in agreement. They were seeing that the Dean campaign is doing what Humphrey did when he brought in farmers and workers; what the anti war movement did in the 60s, what Wellstone did in his campaigns….you are opening doors to a new group of activists who will power the party for years to come.

It’s the same feeling I got seeing all the Dean folks driving to Iowa to campaign, or going to small Meet Ups, or inventing a new way to fund campaigns through small donations.

We are going into a period of time that every successful campaign faces: where we are tested, where the “establishment” writes us off, where sometimes even people you counted on seem to waiver.

When you see that happening, remember how far we’ve come, and how the Dean campaign is about something much greater than the report you see on the news that night. You are reinventing the way we elect leaders, and how we talk about politics, and some people won’t even see that happening until it’s already happened.

I want to thank all of you for giving me fresh faith in a system that needs new energy, and say how excited I am to keep up the battle as we come into these crucial next few weeks.

RT Rybak
Mayor of Minneapolis
Co-Chair Minnesota for Dean