Monday, December 19, 2005
List of cities invited to bid for the 2008 convention
WE’VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com
Andre at Georgia Politics Unfiltered has published the list of cities invited to bid for the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Interestingly, there are 35 cities, not the 33 mentioned in news reports:
Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Memphis, Miami, Miami-Dade County, FL, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, OR., St Louis, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, DC.
The list is basically the same as the 35 cities on the 2004 invitee list, with the following differences:
- In 2004, Minneapolis and St. Paul were both on the list (which made no sense), but only Minneapolis is on the 2008 list.
- Miami-Dade County, FL is on only the 2008 list
I’m not sure why Miami-Dade County was listed separately from Miami unless the Miami Beach Convention Center (Which hosted Rep 68 and 72 and Dem 72), is planning a bid separate from a American Airlines Arena (convention)/Miami Arena (workspace) bid. Note that a Miami Beach Convention Center bid by itself would probably fail, as the DNC has a stated preference for a “bowl” configuration (i.e., a basketball arena) for the convention itself. The last Democratic convention actually held in a typical convention center was the ’84 convention in San Francisco, and the logisitics cause a much smaller seating capacity.
Some interesting omissions from the list:
- Anaheim: As noted, Anaheim hosted suites at both ’04 conventions pushing an ’08 bid, but there’s been no news about a potential Anaheim bid since then. I’m sure if Anaheim still wanted to bid the fact that they’re not on the current list wouldn’t prevent them. But the Miami/Miami-Date separate invitations would imply that Anaheim is not covered by the LA invitation, so it will be interesting to watch what happens here.
- The biggest metropolitan area which was not invited to bid (not counting areas which are suburbs of larger areas) was Tampa. Tampa has hosted Super Bowls – why no invitation?
The deadline to accept or decline invitations to bid is January 13, so we will know in a few weeks which cities are serious.
Posted by Matt at 8:07 PM 
Ummm, it looks like San Antonio did get invited to bid. I assume Tampa wasn’t invited because it is too close to Orlando, which did. Other than that, the next somewhat large metro areas that I don’t see getting invites could be Columbus, OH and Tucson, AZ.
Luis
You are correct about San Antonio, and I have corrected my post.
You also win the prize for very first comment on this blog! Much appreciated.
matt
Minneapolis and St. Paul are different.
A Minneapolis convention would be at the Minneapolis Convention Center or Target Center, while a St. Paul Convention would be at the Xcel Energy Center (or the X).
I was hoping that Chris Coleman’s win in the mayor’s race would have helped St. Paul’s bid, but I guess not.
Hugh
My point about Minneapolis and St. Paul was that any bid from them would need to be combined, since so much, like hotel rooms, would be shared. It’s not clear why St. Paul itself was not invited to make a bid, but I’m sure if the city wanted to, they could.
New Orleans! The convention should be held in New Orleans as a way to highlight the utter in competence in which the Bush administration responded to Hurrican Katrina. There is no better option in my opinion. The Dems could make a point of how long it reconstruction to get underway in the Bayou while we were pumping billions of dollars into Iraq. It is basically the same strategy as the Repubs had in 2004, take it to NY where the greatest disaster occurred, (and where they stated the Dems couldn’t protect) it needs to be brought to the attention in the same way that the Repubs couldn’t help New Orleans.