Democrats' convention will bring big crowd to town

Kristie Greco moved to Charlotte in June, settled into a South End apartment and her new job in an uptown tower.

She was part of a vanguard of workers who for one week next fall will transform Charlotte into the center of American politics, the destination for the president of the United States and reporters from around the world.

Greco is the communications director for the Democratic National Convention, an event that easily will be the biggest in the city's history. Whether you're a long-time Charlottean or still learning to navigate the various Queens Roads, you won't be able to miss it.

Delegates and other visitors will fill hotels from Gastonia to Salisbury. They'll be wined and dined at venues like the NASCAR Hall of Fame and Mint Museum. They'll see Time Warner Cable Arena transformed into a television showcase for some of the biggest names in politics.

Greco is among some 50 staffers who have settled into town for the duration. More will come after the holidays, still more in the spring and summer. Their boss, convention CEO Steve Kerrigan, even planned to get a dog.

"Charlotte's a great city," says Greco. "Everybody has been very welcoming."

The convention will bring around 35,000 people to town. As big as it is, the convention will be only one of the area's political story lines in 2012.

The S.C. GOP primary. While Democrats prepare to re-nominate Barack Obama in Charlotte, Republican presidential hopefuls will flock across the border for the first-in-the-South GOP primary.

GOP candidates from Michele Bachmann to Mitt Romney already have stumped in Rock Hill. S.C. Republicans like to point out that since Ronald Reagan in 1980, no candidate has won their party's nomination without winning their state's primary.

The primary is tentatively set for Feb. 28, but would be moved up if Florida schedules an earlier primary. South Carolina is committed to remaining the campaign's first Southern contest.

The rematch. Charlotte's former Republican Mayor Pat McCrory will try for a rematch against Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue.

In 2008, as Obama pulled off a narrow victory in the state, he lost to Perdue by less than four percentage points. Perdue even carried McCrory's home Mecklenburg County, albeit by a scant 337 votes. A rematch could turn on voters' impressions of the 2011 General Assembly, the first controlled by the GOP in more than a century.

The new districts. Thousands of N.C. voters will find themselves in new voting districts after this year's redistricting. At the congressional level, the districts should make it easier for Republicans to crash what had been safe Democratic districts. New legislative districts, reflecting growth patterns, will continue to put more political power in urban corridors like the one along Interstate 85.