Each year, about 4 million visitors flock to Chicago for meetings and conventions to talk about everything from baseballs and in-line skates to steaks and sushi. They drop about $3.5 billion into the local economy.
By that measure, the 35,000 folks who will show up here for their 1996 convention at the United Center may not seem like much compared to the sporting goods industry or the Restaurant Association, until one considers just who they are.
They are the Democrats and they are coming back to Chicago next Aug. 26 for the first time in almost three decades to nominate a candidate for president, just after the Republicans select their ticket in San Diego.
The last time the Democrats were here, the city erupted in riots that tarnished Chicago’s reputation and made Mayor Richard J. Daley a symbol of everything that was wrong with big-city politics in America.
This time, the legendary mayor’s son runs the show, and Richard M. Daley is widely recognized as the epitome of the modern American urban leader-praised for staying out of the political fray while being a hard-nosed city manager.
The purpose of the 1996 Democratic convention-the renomination of President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore-may be a foregone conclusion; so the key political question a year from now will be whether the dispirited party unites behind Clinton and effectively uses Chicago to counter the Republican nominee.
With the party’s agenda already known, Daley views his role at the convention not as the Machine boss seeking to influence the proceedings and the galleries, but as the consummate host who is just as interested in economics as politics.
There is money to be made. Each convention is expected to generate $100 million in immediate economic benefits, but Chicago and San Diego city officials count the impact of a national political convention in more than dollars.
The gatherings will be attended by prominent opinionmakers-including thousands of journalists from the U.S. and elsewhere-who will use whiz-bang technology to flash new images of Chicago around the world, affecting investment and tourism decisions that could alter the city’s stature for years to come.
The convention will bring its problems. Chicago has a long history of holding national political conventions-23 of them going back to the 1860 nomination of Abraham Lincoln.
But it is the 1968 convention that sticks in most minds and the city is gearing up to counter bad memories.
The mayor understands that images of 1968 will be recalled, said Jim Williams, Daley’s press secretary. “The flip side is that the mayor gets to showcase his wonderful city.”
William Daley, the mayor’s brother and co-chair of Chicago ’96, the covention host committee, said his family is ready for the scrutiny.
“Obviously, the fact that my dad was mayor in ’68 for the last convention, there may be more attention on Chicago nationally,” Daley said, “but I think it’s something we’ve all kind of dealt with over the years.”
Next year’s convention is particularly sensitive for the Chicago police after the infamous street battles with anti-war demonstrators in 1968.
“It’s part of history,” said police Lt. John “Barney” Flanagan, who is spearheading the department’s planning for the 1996 convention. “We’re expecting a lot of questions about that.”
Though conventions are a lightning rod for protest, Flanagan said he isn’t concerned about a repeat performance of 1968 because times are so different.
Chicago’s last convention fell in the midst of the Vietnam War, at a time when riots were flaring in America’s major cities and the country’s most influential leaders, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert Kennedy, had been killed by assassin’s bullets.
“It’s a relatively peaceful world (today),” Flanagan said. “Even though it’s only 28 years, it’s a world apart.”
Though a year away, the convention is figuring in the planning of everyone from First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Chicago area native looking forward to a spectacular homecoming, to the Community News Service, being created to make sure the city’s neighborhoods are not forgotten in all the hoopla.
The city’s usual menu of lakefront extravaganzas and neighborhood festivals will be overlaid with a uniting theme inspired by the convention focusing on “the American experience,” said James Sheahan, Chicago’s executive director of special events.
The chief convention planners say they are ahead of schedule for creating an event that will combine the biggest of political rallies, a telecommunications system large enough to serve a typical suburb and transmit to the world, and the temporary seat of the executive branch of the U.S. government-all for barely a week.
Debra DeLee, CEO for the Democratic National Convention Committee, will move her base of operations to Chicago around Labor Day, four months earlier than the party opened its headquarters in New York for the 1992 convention.
Some things haven’t changed since 1968: Corporations and businesses are vying for the lucrative contracts associated with the 1996 convention.
The party has lined up the Hyatt Regency Chicago as the headquarters hotel and United Airlines as the official carrier, and signed contracts with 56 hotels to house the state and territorial delegations.
But some things have changed dramatically: It is hard to imagine the legendary Mayor Daley hiring Rene Lagler, an Emmy-winning Hollywood production designer, to “do” the convention.
But Lagler has been brought in to devise the look inside the United Center, while Stein & Co. of Chicago is managing the transformation of the home of the Bulls and the Black Hawks into a convention hall, and then back again.
Chicago ’96 lined up a consortium of four minority and women-owned insurance companies in the city to write the $2 million umbrella policy, starting to fulfill a commitment that a minimum of 25 percent of convention business go to minorities and 5 percent to women.
State Sen. Rickey Hendon (D-Chicago) has threatened protests unless satisfied with the minority contracting and Chicago Housing Authority actions regarding the Henry Horner complex near the United Center.
“I’m not a screaming, crazy radical,” Hendon said, “but I’ll do what I have to do if our concerns are not addressed.”
Most of the civic establishment is united behind the convention. In two months of fundraising, Chicago ’96 co-chairs Daley and Richard Notebaert, CEO of Ameritech Corp., have secured $2.4 million in pledges from 22 corporations.
Leslie Fox, executive director of Chicago ’96, said it’s “more than where we thought we’d be at this time.”
Her goal is $7 million in corporate cash contributions, which will be matched by a state tourism grant. The rest of Chicago’s $32 million commitment to the Democrats will be met through city services and in-kind corporate contributions.
The city will hold a civic breakfast on Sept. 7 in the Field Museum to disclose its plans for the year ahead and unveil its logo, an abstract of the Chicago flag.
Despite the lack of suspense, media interest in the convention is intense.
Walter Podrazik, the media logistics coordinator for the Democrats, has conducted some two dozen tours of the United Center for networks, newspapers and others.
One of the major concerns among the media is whether their temporary 150,000-square-foot pavilion built on a United Center parking lot-officials don’t want to call it a tent-will stand up to Chicago’s unpredictable weather.
Outside the United Center, city officials are careful not to call too much attention to improvements-lest it all seem a bit too superficial.
“We’re not gearing things just for cosmetic improvements” around the convention’s West Side site, said Jane Rodriguez, convention project manager for the city. “It’s basically coat-tailing on existing city beautification efforts (and) existing city improvements overall.”
New planters that have spruced up streets near the United Center were started while Chicago still was preparing its bid to hold the convention, said Rodriguez.
The safety, comfort and entertainment of the visitors are primary concerns of the city.
Some 5,000 volunteers will welcome the guests at airports and train stations, answer questions at hotels and ride the buses with them from the Loop to the United Center.
A transportation committee of local, regional, state and federal officials has been working since May to identify primary access routes between the airports, downtown and the United Center and any improvements that might be needed.
Special lanes or dedicated streets for convention traffic between downtown and the United Center at Madison and Wood Streets are among the subjects under study.
The committee, chaired by David Smith, deputy Chicago transportation commissioner, also is reviewing parking around the United Center; staging areas for taxis, limos, buses and perhaps even helicopters; and what special CTA bus and rail service may be necessary.
Under way since last October, the security planning encompasses 29 agencies and is following the blueprint used for World Cup soccer games last year, which Lt. Flanagan also headed.
The World Cup security plan was based on an outline that was devised for the Olympic Games after the disastrous 1972 summer games in Munich, in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed by Arab terrorists.
