WASHINGTON — Chicago’s major role in making the 2020 Democratic convention possible in hotel-challenged Milwaukee emerged Thursday, with the Chicago Sun-Times learning that 26 of the 57 delegations will be assigned to hotels in Rosemont or Lake County.
Asked about the dependence on Illinois hotel rooms to make Milwaukee work, DNC National Press Secretary Brandan Gassaway replied by email: ”We see this as a regional convention designed to engage with communities that will be critical in taking back the White House.”
Rosemont and Lake County each are assigned 13 delegations.
That includes the giant Democratic delegation from California, assigned to a hotel in Rosemont, about 80 miles from downtown Milwaukee, a drive that on a day with no horrible traffic takes about an hour and 21 minutes.
Delegates from swing state Pennsylvania will stay a little closer, in a Lake County hotel; still, that drive will be at least an hour.
I reported earlier this week that the Illinois delegation, requiring at least 200 hotel rooms, was assigned to the Milwaukee Marriott West in suburban Waukesha, southwest of the city. It’s not one of the prime locations — but at least it’s not Rosemont.
The Illinois Democrats will be about a 20-minute drive from the Fiserv Forum, the arena in downtown Milwaukee where the presidential nominating convention will take place July 13- 16 next year.
Nothing against Rosemont, with a plethora of four-star hotels nested around O’Hare Airport. It’s just that Rosemont is, to use a technical term, a schlep from Milwaukee, even taking the I-294 Illinois tollway.
The Democratic National Committee is revealing the convention hotel assignments during the summer meeting in San Francisco; it starts Thursday and runs through Saturday.
It’s not unusual for delegations to be assigned hotels that are not close to the convention arena or the downtown area in the host city.
The Sun-Times obtained the list from the Democratic Party of Illinois.
Lake County has hotels with a variety of price points. The Marriott hotels in Lincolnshire are 63 miles from Milwaukee, with the drive usually at least an hour. Those housed in hotels around Waukegan may lack a bit in stars but will make up for it in location, just 52 miles and a zip up Interstate 94.
Lake County will host delegations from Alaska; Arkansas; Colorado; Connecticut; Hawaii; Idaho; Kansas; Kentucky; New Mexico; North Carolina; Northern Marianas; Pennsylvania and Utah.
Hotels in Rosemont are assigned to delegations from Alabama; American Samoa; California; Florida; Georgia; Guam; Missouri; Nebraska; North Dakota; Tennessee; Texas; Washington and Wyoming.
A DNC source, looking at the bright side, said in an email, “Roughly two-thirds of state delegations will be staying within 45 minutes of the arena entrance. And even the farthest drive is shorter in duration than the longest in Philadelphia and Charlotte,” the sites of previous DNC conventions. For instance, in Philadelphia, a delegate staying in Valley Forge was only 17 miles from the arena, but horrible traffic meant that drive times often reached up to 90 minutes in each direction.
The DNC is “working to support delegations that are farther away with scheduled transportation services to get them in the Convention for their caucus and before opening gavel.”
