This should be my "Day 2" post, but I got home from the convention later and more exhaused than I'd expected, and I'm not up to the task of writing something well organized about all of the things I should write about.  So, instead, a brief summary of the how the votes played out and what they meant now, and the rest of my stories later.

I spent part of the day in the press room with fellow Massachusetts lefty bloggers who were liveblogging the convention: Charley at Blue Mass Group, Lynne at Left in Lowell, and Andy at Mass Revolution Now! (Follow those links for the day's running commentary.)

For background on the candidates, read my post on day 1.  The 1st ballot results...

Governor

Deval Patrick: 58.0%
Tom Reilly: 26.7%
Chris Gabrieli: 15.4%

Lt. Governor

Tim Murray: 49.0%
Andrea Silbert: 28.9%
Deb Goldberg: 22.0%

Secretary

Bill Galvin: 70.7%
John Bonifaz: 29.3%

cos is at the MA Democratic Party Convention, and is covering it for MyDD.  His first post is below.  I love conventions.

Friday, June 2nd - Some things don't change: When I was in college, the LGBT group on campus always had the best parties.  Here at the Massachusetts Democratic State Convention, MassEquality has the best party.  Another pattern I've noticed: Everywhere I go in Worcester, MA seems to have a free wireless network.  Is this what municipal wi-fi would be like?

The first day of the state convention officially closed several hours ago.  Swirling rumors notwithstanding, nothing exciting happened aside from Ted Kennedy and George McGovern's speeches.  Today, the party voted on the uncontested candidates for Democratic nominations for statewide office: Ted Kennedy for US Senate, Joe DeNucci for Auditor, Tim Cahill for Treasurer, and Martha Coakley for Attorney General.  All of them will be on the ballot, with the party's endorsement.

The real excitement will wait for tomorrow, when delegates vote on contested races.  Each candidate for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Secretary, needs at least 15% of the vote to be on the September primary ballot; in each race, one candidate will get the convention endorsement with the support of more than 50% of the delegates.  Among the candidates are Matt Stoller's favorite politician Deval Patrick, and the candidate I work for, John Bonifaz.  And for all three offices, the outcome is uncertain.

The new progressive grassroots/netroots movement that sprang up nationally during the 2003 Democratic presidential primary campaign got a head start here in Massachusetts with Robert Reich's run for Governor in 2002.  At the 2002 convention, progressives pulled an upset by getting Reich on the ballot.  Since then, we've learned a lot, and competed in many campaigns.  This is is the first nominating convention (held every 4 years) since the Reich vote, and a test of how far we've come.  Here's what we're looking forward to tomorrow...

Today's Globe reports a new wrinkle in the race for the Democratic nomination for governor.  Christopher Gabrieli, the 2002 Lt. Gov. nominee who was earlier negotiating to run on a team with Reilly this time, may be interested in running himself.  Gabrieli seems like a nice enough guy but his electoral track record is not good -- the Globe story says that he spent $5M of his own money to finish sixth in the primary for MA-08 in 1998, and another $5M in the 2002 race.  (From my perspective it's hard to believe that $5M total was spent on O'Brien's 2002 campaign...)

Getting Gabrieli on the ballot would apparently require 500 of the 3000 state convention delegates elected last week to sign petitions.  Since nearly all of these are committed to either Patrick or Reilly, this isn't so likely unless one of those two actually drops out.

But someone is clearly interested in sending the message that some Democratic insiders have decided that Reilly is a loser, and that they don't like Patrick much.  There's been a lot of negative-about-both press in the Globe lately -- for example, some union leaders were quoted as unhappy about Patrick's position on the board of union-hostile Ameriquest, and unhappy with some parallel thing about Reilly.  (The Patrick spin is that Patrick joined the Ameriquest board in order to help them implement a settlement they had reached with workers.)