Salt Lake City was announced as one of 15 cities invited to bid to host the 2016 Democratic National Convention. We asked our “political insiders” and readers whether they thought Utah would be able to land the quadrennial gathering.
Selected anonymous comments:
“I would love to see it but truth is Utah has no relevance when it comes to national politics, due to it’s predetermined outcomes.”
“It doesn’t accomplish anything for the Democrats nationally–this is not a swing state. It would actually be counter-productive locally as the much more liberal side of the party would be covered closely by the local media.”
“No way. The only reason SLC is on a list is to appease some local Democratic bigwig.”
“This is a joke, right?”
“I think this is an effort to pat the local Dem’s on the head and say, nice try.”
“Do pigs fly? No way.”
“Talk about your square peg in a hound hole.”
“If the convention did come to SLC, it might be useful for all the eastern liberals who are worried about the sage grouse to get up close and personal with a true endangered species: The Utah Democrat.”
“Democrats in Utah? They would never reward the most Republican State in the Union with a convention!”
“The only reason that Utah is in the running is because of marriage equality – who would have thought that Utah would open the flood gates to marriage equality for the whole country?”
“Unless Park City is willing to float the fundraising requirement, the Dems will stay away from Utah. However, I do wish Utah would get it. Finally the Dems would do something helpful for the State.”
“While I’d love for it to happen, I doubt they’ll break their recent tradition of holding these in swing states.”
“This requires a large amount of money and volunteers. The money could be raised but they’d have to import the volunteers. With their push for increased membership, I can see them drooling. I doubt they will pull it off. But I’m sure it’s provided for lively conversation.”
“It would bring great exposure and local economic stimulus for the state as well as some first class irony that the biggest event held in the city since the Olympics would be the Democratic National Convention. It would be greatly entertaining to see how the legislature and Congressional delegation would react and if they would lift a finger to help in any meaningful way. But the chances seem slight at best. The dissonance between a likely 2016 national Dem platform (marriage equality, expanded access to healthcare, living wage, etc) and the local politics would just be too much to overcome. Also both of the Obama era DNC convention cities (Denver, Charlotte) fit in more with the new coalition of voters that national Dems are pursuing and were in battleground states.”
“Although there aren’t any significant races the presence of the DNC might help, there is something ironic about holding the DNC in the front yard of the Republicans.”
“With our lack of a state-wide nondiscrimination ordinance, our response to the marriage equality ruling, the obvious animus towards gay families (fighting legal adoptions), our Right-to-work/right-to-get-fired laws, at-the-bottom education funding, and last in the nation in gender income disparity, the Democratic Party will NOT be spending their money in Utah any time soon.”
“Utah gets it only if Alaska is not available.”
“They just threw us a bone — like the RNC did four years ago. Utah will do a bunch of busy work just to sit by and watch another girl asked to the prom.”
“Two reasons they won’t: Utah has too few electoral votes and they’re all guaranteed to be Republican.”
“Isn’t part of the purpose of convention location to help sway a swing state their way? It would be neat for Utah to be part of something like that. But Utah ain’t voting for Hillary in 2016.”
“Utah won’t be in play, and Mayor McAdams’ convention center hotel won’t be done yet.”
