DFL CD2 2012 Central/Executive Meeting Dates

Caucuses and Conventions Information and Aids

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Precinct Caucus Convener Training Schedule
You may attend any session. 
We encourage you to attend the one scheduled for your Senate District/County Unit, but the training is for anyone.

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Save the Date!
CD2 DFL Convention

Contact CD2 Chair Jeanne Thomas (cjtdfl@aol.com) with any questions.

A Time For Real Change!

As a result of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street, the American people have experienced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Millions of Americans, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs, homes, life savings, and ability to send their kids to college. Small businesses have been unable to get the credit they need to expand their businesses, and credit is still extremely tight. Wages as a share of national income are now at the lowest level since the Great Depression, and the number of Americans living in poverty is at an all-time high.  read more

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Campagin Finance Trainings

190 Centennial Building
658 Cedar Street
St. Paul, Minnesota 55155
Telephone: (651) 296-5148 / (800) 657-3889

 http://www.cfbreport.state.mn.us/Train/ 

Join Us! Stay Connected to Other CD2 Democrats!

The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) was created on April 15, 1944 when the Minnesota Democratic Party and Farmer-Labor Party merged to create the DFL. Hubert H. Humphrey was instrumental in this merger. The party is affiliated with the national Democratic Party. In 1954 Orville Freeman was elected the state's first DFL governor. Minneapolis Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey and Walter Mondale, who each served as United States Senator and Vice President of the United States were important members the party. The party's headquarters are in St Paul, Minnesota.

For a complete history of the DFL please visit: http://justcomm.org/fla-hist.htm

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The Democratic Donkey

When Andrew Jackson ran for President in 1828, his opponents tried to label him a “Jackass” for his populist views and his slogan, “Let the people rule”. Jackson, however, picked up on their name calling and turned it to his own advantage by using the donkey on his campaign posters. During his presidency, the donkey was used to represent Jackson’s stubbornness when he vetoed re-chartering the National Bank.

The first time the donkey was used in a political cartoon to represent the Democratic Party was, again, in conjunction with Jackson. Although in 1837 Jackson was retired, he still thought of himself as the Party’s leader and was shown trying to get the donkey to go where he wanted it to go. The cartoon was titled “A Modern Baalim and his Ass”.

Interestingly enough, the person credited with getting the donkey widely accepted as the Democratic Party’s symbol probably had no knowledge of the prior associations. Thomas Nast, a famous political cartoonist, came to the United States with his parents in 1840 when he was six. He first used the donkey in the 1870 Harper’s Weekly cartoon to represent the “Copperhead Press” kicking a dead lion, symbolizing Lincoln’s Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who had recently died. Nast intended the donkey to represent an anti-war faction with whom he disagreed, but the symbol caught the public’s fancy and the cartoonist continued using it to indicate some Democratic editors and newspapers.

Later, Nast used the donkey to portray what he called “Caesarism” showing the alleged Democratic uneasiness over a possible third term for Ulysses S. Grant. In conjunction with this issue, Nast helped associate the elephant with the Republican Party. Although the elephant had been connected with the Republican Party in cartoons that appeared in 1872, it was Nast’s Cartoon in 1874 published by Harper’s Weekly that made the pachyderm stick as the Republican’s symbol.

By 1880 the donkey was well-established as a mascot for the Democratic Party. A Cartoon about the Garfield-Hancock campaign in the New York Daily Graphic showed the Democratic candidate mounted on a donkey, leading a procession of crusaders.

Over the years, the donkey and elephant have become the acceptedsymbols of the Democratic and Republican parties. Although the Democrats have never officially adopted the donkey as a party symbol, we have used various donkey designs on publications over the years. The republicans have actually adopted the elephant as their official symbol and use the design widely.

Adlai Stevenson provided one of the most clever descriptions of the Republican’s symbol when he said, “The elephant has a thick skin, a head full of ivory, and as everyone who has seen a circus parade knows, proceeds best by grasping the tail of its predecessor”.

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