I forgot to mention this asp.net 2.0.
The user control has a unique id and it is loaded in the PageLoad event. The user control is loaded into a panel and the panel is inside of a webpart. The dropdown has autopostback set to true.
EnableViewState = true on the dropdown. The ListItems are created in the dropdowns pre-render event method.
This is why I don't understand why it is not firing, the dropdown is the only thing that causes postback on this user control.
The event methods for the dropdown should occur since the user control is loaded in the page load method on postback again right?