The Announcement

This was originally e-mailed to the DFL State Central Committee on Monday, December 20, 2010
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Fellow State Central Committee Members:

Over the past few years I have become more and more actively involved in volunteer and paid DFL political work, and in that time I have come to know and work with many of you. I can't say that I know all of you yet, but I write to you now to humbly ask for your support of my candidacy to be the next Secretary for the State DFL Party.

I want to first thank outgoing Secretary Susan Rego for her outstanding work.

A brief biography: I spend the first 18 years of my life in Caledonia, MN (Houston County) and currently live in La Crescent, MN (also Houston County). I attended New York University from 2002-2006 and graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Social Studies Education. I've worked in factories, I've worked on campaigns, I've tutored school children through AmeriCorps.

Having now served on the Houston County DFL's Executive Committee (currently as Chair), the First Congressional District DFL's Executive Committee (currently as Male Delegate to the State AA Commission), as well as working to organize in southeastern (SD31) and southwestern (SD21 and SD22) Minnesota during the last two election cycles, I feel that I have a unique perspective to add to the State DFL's Executive and Central Committee as its Secretary.

As a former DFL staffer and a Chair in a purple (and sometimes more red) part of the state, I know how hard it is to get people active in our party's work. I have worked in fairly friendly territory (SD31: Fillmore, Houston, and Winona Counties in 2008), and fairly Red territory (SD21 and SD22: Brown, Cottonwood, Jackson, Lyon, Murray, Nobles, Pipestone, Redwood, Rock, and Watonwan in 2010).

I have gathered thoughts from our last two DFL State Secretaries, Susan Rego and Dave Lee, regarding their perspectives on their role as Secretary: the constitutionally mandated work, the extra add-on work (such as managing this SCC list) that is performed, and the "day in the life" aspect of being the secretary for the MN DFL.

I believe that I am qualified to fulfill the duties required of the Secretary as prescribed by the DFL Constitution as well as the other extra work that has been performed splendidly by our former and outgoing secretaries, I have the organizational skills and previous relevant work experience required to perform these duties

My past work experience includes working in a factory that produced (among other things) energy drink powders. As the person (known as a batcher) that prepared ingredients to be mixed in mass quantities, I was required to keep a very detailed account of what ingredients went into what mixture for mass production via a paper trail and via computer program. Later on I became the inventory batcher for the small packaging line, keeping detailed track of the supplies with which our products were packaged. As a campaign staffer I was required to keep track of voter contact data, volunteer recruitment data and recount data. As a tutor for AmeriCorps during the 2009-2010 school year, I had to maintain very specific and confidential data relating to my MN Reading Corps service tutoring school children grades K through 3 with their reading skills.

I have non-political volunteer and board experience, I recently went off the board of Ye Olde Opera House Community Theater after 4 years (term-limited), my last year spent as President. And I have been an active volunteer with the YOOH since 2001.

I have experience taking and writing minutes, including one year for church council, and more recently at our 2010 County Convention. Through my research and guidance I was instrumental in helping Houston County maintain and amend a new party unit constitution at our 2010 Convention.

I currently maintain the e-mail list for Houston County DFL, and I am an administrator for the Houston County DFL page and First Congressional District group on Facebook (both of which I created).

I helped manage my friend Steve Kemp's unsuccessful campaign to unseat Greg Davids in 2010.

I also have over 2 years of experience working with the VoterFile database (aka the VAN).

Beyond the skills set needed for the position of Secretary, I believe I also offer the perspective of:

1. A younger DFL member
2. A DFL member from Greater Minnesota.
3. A former DFL staffer (most recently as a member of the Dayton Recount Committee)

These three aspects of my DFL involvement, I believe, would help to add extra insight to our Executive and Central Committee's decision-making processes to lead our party into the future.

I personally want to be able to reach out, not only to the people my age through active communication with the MYDFL and it's subordinate organizations (i.e. College Dems, and High School Dems) throughout the state, but also help keep open a line of communication between the State Party, the Metropolitan units, and the party units in Greater Minnesota - a line of communication built on mutual trust and understanding. We can build stronger relationships and connections throughout the state, so that we can all understand the perspectives with which individual members of the SCC are looking our party's decisions and strategies. Connecting with and understanding one another and gaining statewide perspective helps to make our party more successful as a whole. We all know the words of our late great Senator Wellstone ". . . we all do better when we all do better."

How do we continue to build these connections? We keep an open running dialogue, we listen to one another, we educate one another, we pool together our collective ideas and resources to continue to create and improve statewide trainings and training materials in key topics such as fund-raising, messaging (and its off-shoots: blogs, social media, local media, etc), party-building and community outreach (all races, creeds, religions, income levels, genders and sexual identities). We tell each other our "best practices" on these topics so that as local units we don't have to keep reinventing the wheel. Not everything will work exactly the same in all parts of the state, but we can surely share our ideas to adapt them to work for each local unit. Just as all of these topics are interconnected, we as a state party are interconnected.

If we build on utilizing our talents to train one another (and have our professional political operatives offer their advice) on how to frame our ideas, how to disseminate our principles and our message, and our talking points, through local papers, through the blog universe, and through social media, as well as having key federal and state talking points readily available to local and Congressional party units, we can all do better together, we can use these talking points from our Legislative and Executive Leaders to help aid them in the battle for public opinion. We can always do better to explain the principles behind why we're called the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Not only do we help our party by defending and exclaiming its principles and ideas, but we help to show potential new active members (the less active Democrats, and the general public) that we are the party that fights for their causes. We all do better when we all do better.

I am ready, willing and able to take on this new challenge as we continue to maintain and grow our DFL party, protect our incumbent State and Federal DFL office-holders, and work toward new DFL majorities in St. Paul.

Please feel free to ask questions via this list, through my e-mail which is jacobandersongrippen@gmail.com or by cell phone 347.834.1771 (my number is a souvenir from my college years in NYC)

You can also follow me on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Jacob-Grippen-for-DFL-Secretary/185288971488004

I look forward to talking to you about my candidacy and to hear your ideas for continuing to move our party forward.

I once again humbly ask for your support at February's DFL Business Conference.

Sincerely,

Jacob Grippen
Chair - Houston County DFL
CD1 Male Delegate to State AAC (CD1 Executive Committee)

P.S. I want to wish everyone a Happy Holiday Season, and a Happy New Year!