Don't attempt to connect to the Selenium server at import; Wait until the first test is run.

gistfile1.py

class SeleniumTestCase(LiveServerTestCase):

    _selenium_server_running = None

    @property
    def selenium_server_running(self):
        """
        Determine if we can connect to the Selenium RC server.
        Only evaluated once for performance reasons.
        """
        if SeleniumTestCase._selenium_server_running is not None:
            return SeleniumTestCase._selenium_server_running

        try:
            conn = httplib.HTTPConnection(settings.SELENIUM_SERVER_HOST,
                                          settings.SELENIUM_SERVER_PORT)
            try:
                conn.request("GET", "/selenium-server/driver/", '', {})
            finally:
                conn.close()
            SeleniumTestCase._selenium_server_running = True
        except socket.error:
            SeleniumTestCase._selenium_server_running = False

        return SeleniumTestCase._selenium_server_running

    def setUp(self):
        if not self.selenium_server_running:
            message = ("Can't connect to the Selenium server using address"
                       " %s and port %s" % (settings.SELENIUM_SERVER_HOST,
                                            settings.SELENIUM_SERVER_PORT))
            raise SkipTest(message)
        ....