San Antonio weighs hosting GOP convention in 2020
After fusillade from Trump’s campaign chair, mayor says City Council will discuss this week
SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio has the capacity to host the next Republican National Convention with its abundance of downtown hotels, a renovated Alamodome and an open calendar for August 2020.
But local leaders soon will have to decide whether pursuing the massive event is too costly.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg said Thursday that the City Council next week will discuss the matter in a private session. He stressed the importance of objectively weighing the impacts.
The issue came to the forefront last week when President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign manager, Brad Parscale, unleashed a storm of tweets — similar to his boss’ frequent attacks on adversaries — slamming Nirenberg as “weakkneed.”
Despite his trolling of Nirenberg, Parscale said in a text message late Thursday that he still hopes San Antonio submits a bid.
Nirenberg has said he doesn’t respond to tweet-storms from political operatives. The attacks seem not to have swayed him in one way or another.
“We’re going to have a council briefing to update everyone on where the RNC RFP (request for proposal) stands and discuss any action insofar as a response, understanding that there’s major impact, positive and negative, to come from our engagement with a political convention,” he said.
Huge economic impact
Among the considerations, he said, are the needed subsidies from public dollars, the benefit to local businesses and the potential community response.
“The whole process locally has been very confusing, and it doesn’t bring confidence to the numbers we’re being given about subsidies and impact, especially this latest episode this week,” he said.
Earlier in the week, Parscale apparently began making phone calls to local leaders, pushing the matter. The selection committee is meeting soon to deliberate, and Parscale indicated in an email to Nirenberg that he’d put his finger on the scale for San Antonio.
But a month ago, leaders here met with the chairman of the selection committee and apparently signaled there was little interest in pursuing the event.
On March 23, Ron Kaufman, RNC national committeeman, stopped in town for a lunch with a handful of GOP business leaders and several local officials at the members-only Club Giraud.
“Based on the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, the cost of meeting these basic requirements and hosting the 2020 Republican National Convention is estimated to be between $68 million and $70 million, including both cash and valued in-kind contributions,” according to the RNC’s request for proposals.
The city and county would need to put public funds into the pot for the deal to work, said several people who attended the lunch.
“My perspective is that whether it’s the DNC or the RNC, we are going to be hardpressed to provide incentives for that kind of convention, regardless of what party,” said Ramiro Cavazos, the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce CEO.
According to several people with knowledge of the current matter, the city would receive tens of millions of dollars appropriated by Congress to pay for required security.
The economic impact would range from $120 million to $180 million, according to those same sources.
Fears of violence
But there’s significant worry that the convention — in the era of President Donald Trump — could result in not just protests, but bloody riots.
“Chicago got a terrible black eye and so did Mayor Daley,” because of police beating demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, said former San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger. “I could see the same thing happening here, by the way.”
Hardberger — a Democrat, now unencumbered and free to speak without filters — said he thinks it’s a bad idea to pursue the convention both for San Antonio and for Trump.
“I don’t think he’d get much of a welcome here. He’s spent quite a bit of time running down Hispanics in general and Mexico and Mexican-Americans. He’s referred to them as ‘murderers and rapists’ and being lazy, and God knows what else he’s said,” Hardberger said. “And it wasn’t a one-time thing. He has continued to insult Hispanics. Well, 67 percent of this community is Hispanic. And, of course, all the things he said about Hispanics are totally unjustified and totally wrong, but nevertheless hurtful. I don’t think there would be a lot of people here who would welcome him here to San Antonio.”
As that March 23 lunch concluded, Cavazos recalled, there seemed to be a strong sentiment that pursuing the convention wasn’t a good idea.
“I assumed they’d gotten the message,” he said. “I saw this as a closed chapter already.”
The next day, according to sources close to the matter, Nirenberg was passed a message that the RNC was no longer interested in accepting a bid from San Antonio.
Next week, the mayor and council, seen as the most progressive group ever to sit on the dais, will meet and determine whether there’s consensus to proceed.