Who will the convention boost?

Posted at 2:47 PM on September 27, 2006 by Bob Collins

Lost, at least so far, in all the brouhaha over where to stick a convention is this nugget: does it really help a party in a particular state?

The prevailing wisdom seems to be that the GOP has selected the Twin Cities to boost GOP chances in a state that is more geographically red, than blue. Two things are in play: Norm Coleman's re-election bid to the Senate and Minnesota's 10 electoral votes in the presidential bid. OK, maybe Tim Pawlenty as the VP on a ticket with John McCain too, I guess.

It's hard to imagine Coleman's chances being changed one way or another by the location of the convention. He's not going to stand out as a bigshot on a national stage because there are too many , well, bigger shots in line for that. It only works if he gets the keynote spot and the party isn't going to put a convention here to help him and give him the keynote. His re-election is important, but it's not that important to the GOP; not in comparison to getting a Republican president elected.

Ron Carey says it helps the upper Midwest go Red. Let's look again at the results of the 2004 election:

No question, it was close. But do folks really think if the 2004 Republican Convention were held in St. Paul instead of New York City, the results would've been different?

And if that's true, then shouldn't the convention be in Duluth? And, by the way, Kerry mopped the floor with Bush in New York state in 2004.

So does it make a difference in the electoral votes? Well, if that really were the issue, then tell me why Cleveland just lost out on the convention, and why Miami and Houston aren't the frontrunners for the Democratic convention?

Unquestionably -- at least in my opinion -- the Mississippi River Valley is the key to electing a president these days. Maybe that's why Gore and Lieberman's first stop after their convention 2000 (a convention that was held in Los Angeles) was Minnesota, for a riverboat ride down the Mississippi.

In the end, the noisemakers and "coolness" of the convention wears off, usually replaced by people voting for candidate they like. Political conventions are mostly irrelevant in terms of geography.

However, I can see the convention most helping (1) The person who ends up being in charge of the local convention organizing committee. and (2) The local mayor.

In the latter case, those are Democrats.

Irony is cruel.

Of course those are also the people who face the biggest risk if this thing sucks a ton of money out of the economy and people can't get to work.

That's my take on it. Here's Larry Jacobs'.

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