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A candidate gave a speech while in labor — then had to withdraw from the race to give birth

cigaretteman

HR King
May 29, 2001
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For months, a running joke inside Erin Maye Quade’s campaign for the Minnesota state Senate was that the candidate, pregnant with her first child, might actually give birth April 23, the day Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party delegates would gather to vote on who would be the party’s nominee for the race.

It would be a grueling convention, packed with speeches, in-person campaigning for delegates’ support and potentially multiple rounds of balloting.
As fate would have it, at 6:15 a.m. Saturday, the day of the convention, Maye Quade texted her campaign manager, Mitchell Walstad, to let him know that she had gone into labor four hours earlier.
“We weren’t sure she was going to make it,” Walstad told The Washington Post. Nevertheless, Maye Quade arrived at the convention hall, and her team devised a plan to slowly walk her around to greet delegates, then whisk her back to their campaign room every 15 or 20 minutes when a new contraction would start.








By the time the candidate speeches began, her contractions were intensifying.
“This is our moment to build our future together,” Maye Quade told the roughly 200 delegates in attendance, as captured in a video shared on social media. “To unlock the powerful, life-affirming, transformative kind of politics that means we can … create economic opportunity and prosperity, and safeguard our civil and human rights …”
Here, Maye Quade paused for a beat and touched her stomach. Another contraction was starting.
“… and strengthen our human and public infrastructure … excuse me,” she said, before stopping again. She doubled over and gripped a nearby surface with both hands, in visible pain.

By now, it was obvious Maye Quade was in active labor. Many in the crowd cheered her on.

They were approaching the first round of balloting, where either Maye Quade or her opponent, Justin Emmerich, might receive 60 percent of the delegates’ votes to win the party’s endorsement outright. So Maye Quade also labored through the question-and-answer period that followed the speeches.






“It was like 10 questions back and forth,” Walstad said. “At one point, they had to switch up the order, I believe, because she was having a contraction in the middle of when she was supposed to answer.”
However, Maye Quade said that after the vote took place — but before they were tallied — neither one of the candidates was likely to secure the nomination outright. She approached Emmerich to ask if he would support suspending the convention to move on to a primary, knowing she would need to go to the hospital soon.

According to her team, Emmerich did not agree. In a statement, Emmerich disputed that he told Maye Quade no outright.
“After the first ballot had been completed, I received word from a member of my campaign that the results showed me leading by 55-44 percent (1 percent abstaining),” Emmerich said. “I was on my way to talk to my floor manager to verify this information when Erin pulled me aside.”










“She asked if I would be willing to suspend the convention and take the race to a primary since it appeared to be about even,” he added. “I responded by saying I hadn’t verified the count yet and would get back to her. She said that was fine. However, before I was able to speak with her again, she made the decision to suspend her campaign.”

The results from the first round of balloting showed Maye Quade’s prediction was correct: Emmerich had received 91 votes and Maye Quade 74, triggering a second round of balloting. Since she was at her “breaking point,” though, Maye Quade withdrew from the race so she could go to the hospital instead of remaining to try to convince delegates to switch their votes to her, Walstad said.
Emmerich went on to win the DFL Party endorsement, unopposed, on the second round of balloting. Maye Quade delivered a baby girl, Harriet, some 12 hours later at about 2 a.m. Sunday.

“INCREDIBLY EXCITED to announce I won the @MinnesotaDFL Endorsement on the 2nd ballot with 71% of the vote!!! We are going to work hard till the election to keep this seat blue and #flipthesenate Thank you to all my supporters!” Emmerich tweeted Saturday afternoon.











In his statement Monday, Emmerich said he would have agreed to suspend or postpone the convention had there been a formal request.
“However no such request or motion was made,” he said. “I continue to believe an endorsement is in the best interest of our efforts to keep this seat in DFL hands and to flip the Senate in November.”
Emma McBride, the political director of Women Winning and one of Maye Quade’s supporters who was at the convention Saturday, said Maye Quade’s campaign did not make a formal request because it would have required the support of at least two-thirds of the delegates, something they thought was unlikely since Emmerich did not agree to Maye Quade’s personal request.

McBride said she was also disappointed no party leaders stepped in to suspend the proceedings when they witnessed Maye Quade in active labor.






“Erin had a contraction during her speech in front of a room of 200 people and then again during her Q&A,” McBride told The Post. “While her opponent continued on answering the question, she was bent over in the chair holding her wife’s hand — and then immediately afterward was handed the mic and expected to answer a question, which she did and she did flawlessly.”
Nancy Stroessner, a district chairwoman of the DFL Party in Minnesota, said they learned Maye Quade was in labor going into the convention Saturday “but wanted to be present and move forward with the endorsement process that day.” The delegates had earlier unanimously supported moving the endorsement process — including the speeches and balloting rounds — earlier in the convention to accommodate Maye Quade, she added.

“When Erin ultimately requested to withdraw from the endorsement process, we did not second-guess her decision,” Stroessner said in a statement, adding that convention chairs “cannot unilaterally close or delay the endorsement process.”


Maye Quade’s supporters feel certain that had a candidate been experiencing any other medical emergency — a seizure or heart attack, for example — the convention would not have proceeded.
“While we were in awe of her strength, it was actually horrifying to watch a woman go through this vulnerable experience with nobody with the power to do so stepping in and putting an end to it,” McBride said.
Clare Oumou Verbeten, a candidate for another state Senate seat, said it hurt her “to see this very public display of a Black woman pushing through pain.”

“Black women are always expected to be so strong,” Verbeten said in a Facebook post. “We deserve tenderness, care, and rest.”
Walstad said Maye Quade’s campaign is not likely to appeal to the state party, but he would like to see the process become more inclusive and respectful of all people’s health and well-being.
“Like, if someone was like, ‘Hey, Erin had a heart attack.’ There’s no way that the people would have got up and said, ‘Well, we have to endorse by acclamation!’ ” Walstad said. “Definitely the feeling we got was like we have to prioritize politics over health because otherwise, we’re just … out of luck, you know? And that’s not a good system.”

 
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