Clintons said OK with ’16 Brooklyn bid
NEW YORK — It has been 22 years since Bill Clinton accepted his party’s presidential nomination to the backdrop of Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” and raucous applause at Madison Square Garden. Now, both he and Hillary Rodham Clinton are said to be encouraging Mayor Bill de Blasio’s efforts to bring the convention back to New York City, this time to Brooklyn, the haven of liberal cool.
Members of the Democratic National Committee’s Technical Advisory Group will arrive in the city this week to hear the mayor’s pitch about why Brooklyn would better serve the party than the other locations in the running: Birmingham, Ala.; Columbus, Ohio; Philadelphia; and Phoenix. The decision will be announced late this year or early next year.
Before de Blasio began his bid to win the convention — and the money spent by donors, delegates and members of the international news media that come with it — he made sure he had the Clintons’ blessing, said three people familiar with the discussions, who spoke anonymously because they could not comment on the record about private conversations.
A spokesman for Hillary Clinton declined to comment. De Blasio’s senior adviser, Peter Ragone, said the convention bid “is about showcasing” New York, not any candidate in particular.
But at a gathering with corporate executives at City Hall last week, according to one person who was there, de Blasio said it would be a “perfect scenario” were Clinton, who represented the state in the U.S. Senate, to accept the nomination in New York, with the convention itself turning into a “homecoming.”
The city’s bid is being spearheaded by veteran Clinton hands, including Gabrielle Fialkoff, who served as finance director for Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, which de Blasio managed. Other Clinton supporters, including financier Alan Patricof, a longtime friend and donor to the Clintons, attended the briefing last week at City Hall.
In a 49-page proposal presented to Democratic officials and business leaders, de Blasio lays out his vision to transform Brooklyn into a week-long Democratic fete, at a cost to taxpayers of $8.1 million. The city wants to raise an additional $132 million in private donations.
The convention would be held at the Barclays Center, home to the Brooklyn Nets basketball team, and private ferries would shuttle delegates and donors from Manhattan across the East River to Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Navy Yard, an industrial park 1½ miles from the arena, has been considered for a media center. Celebrity athletes and actors would accompany delegates to Broadway shows and museums, and the city is even proposing a special subway MetroCard for convention week, although officials declined to elaborate on the details.
Traditional wisdom holds that political conventions should take place in crucial battleground states.
For their convention, Republicans have already selected Cleveland, which Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, called “a great steppingstone to the White House in 2016.”
No Republican has carried New York state since Ronald Reagan in 1984. But if the state lacks an electoral advantage for the Democrats, New York City can more than make up for it in political optics, campaign strategists said. That was the Republicans’ thinking going into the 2004 campaign when the party chose New York to nominate President George W. Bush for a second term, in part because of the symbolism of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Brooklyn itself has its own advantages. In 2016, Clinton will be 69, but the borough, seen as a hipster bastion, would give any nominee “a youthful, forward-looking appearance,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic consultant who has worked for her. Brooklyn is also a touchstone for millennial voters and the party’s liberal wing.
The Clintons have not discouraged bids by other potential host cities, particularly Philadelphia, where their close friend, former Gov. Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania, is spearheading its entry. The competition has touched off the kind of New York-Philadelphia rivalry that is typically reserved for professional sports teams.
“I don’t think Bill and Hillary Clinton could possibly be that politically naive,” said Rendell, who also served as Philadelphia’s mayor. “New York is a solidly blue state that never votes Republican. Pennsylvania is a swing state whose margins are closer and closer. Where would you go?”