U.S. Sen. and former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry will be the keynote speaker at the Washington State Democratic Convention later this month, party officials confirmed today.

Although Kerry may have slipped a few notches from an "A" list guest compared to 2004, he did carry Washington in the last presidential election and still has plenty of fans in the state. And as an early supporter of Barack Obama, he sort of qualifies as a surrogate.

He'll speak about 10 a.m. Saturday, current scheduling says.

But the Kerry as keynote confirmation brings to mind one of the glitches at last weekend's Washington State Republican Convention. Everyting did not go off entirely smoothly, as readers of the weekend blog-a-thon might have surmised, but one of the biggest hiccups was the loss of the scheduled speaker for Friday evening's banquet.