“Five bores and a sadist” (political committee composition)

New York (NY) Times columnist Russell Baker (1925-2019) wrote on August 6, 1968, about the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida:
 
“MIAMI BEACH, August 5.—Every political convention opens with a dispensable day. It was planned weeks in advance by six bores and a sadist.”
 
The saying means that most political people on a committee are just plain boring, but one person is a sadist and enjoys the tedium.
 
Joel R. Connelly of the Seattle (WA) Post-Intelligencer has used the expression several times, but always as “five bores and a sadist.” Connelly used the term on January 21, 1993; December 13, 1999; June 16, 2003; May 2, 2007; May 29, 2013 and January 6, 2020. “David Brinkley great line on national conventions, that they were choreographed by ‘five bores and a sadist.’ Was that CNBC’s team tonight?” was posted by Connelly on Twitter on October 28, 2015.
   
         
6 August 1968, New York (NY) Times “A Dispensable Day Planned That Way” by Russell Baker, pg. 1, col. 6:
MIAMI BEACH, August 5.—Every political convention opens with a dispensable day. It was planned weeks in advance by six bores and a sadist.
   
12 August 1968, Wall Street Journal (New York, NY), “Politics as Usual,” pg. 8, col. 1:
Of course the Republican planners were little help. Russell Baker of the New York Times was not especially unjust when he jested that the rambling opening-day festivities were arranged by a committee of six bores and a sadist. Surely television’s electronic marvels could be put to better use.
 
Time
Reporting: Search Beyond Sadism
Friday, Aug. 16, 1968
The Republican National Convention, decided Russell Baker of the New York Times, had been “planned weeks in advance by six bores and a sadist.” How else would you explain, asked Baker, such yawn-inducing acts as the “presentation of the orangewood gavel to the chairman of the Republican National Committee by O. D. Huff Jr., chairman of the Florida Citrus Commission,” or Tony Martin singing a “few hit tunes of the Alf Landon era?”
 
Seattle (WA) Post-Intelligencer
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS—POLITICS NEWS
A dog’s breakfast of endorsements in Seattle mayor’s race
By Joel Connelly on May 29, 2013 at 12:14 PM
With multiple ballots, Rube Goldberg rules, runoffs and super-majority requirements, Seattle Democrats’ endorsement meetings seem choreographed by a secret committee made up of five bores and a sadist.
 
Twitter
joel r. connelly
@joelconnelly
David Brinkley great line on national conventions, that they were choreographed by “five bores and a sadist.” Was that CNBC’s team tonight?
10:19 PM · Oct 28, 2015·Twitter Web Client
   
Seattle (WA) Post-Intelligencer
A real-life Democratic presidential primary: Washington will count in 2020
The party’s March 10 primary will allocate national convention delegates
By Joel Connelly, SeattlePI Published 2:08 pm PST, Monday, January 6, 2020
An old joke has held that Washington’s Democratic and Republican presidential precinct caucuses were crafted by a committee made up of five bores and a sadist, with convoluted rules, chaotic organization, domination by ideological extremes and results that counted for nothing with nomination races long since decided.