Decades before the RNC came to town, a band of ‘original dreamers’ laid the groundwork
In 1996 Frank Whitney had a crazy idea — bringing a national political convention to Charlotte.
An assistant federal prosecutor, he’d just returned from the Republican National Convention in San Diego where he’d been an alternate delegate.
“I just thought, ‘Hey, maybe Charlotte can put this thing on,’” Whitney, now a chief U.S. District Court judge, recalled Tuesday.
More than two decades later, Charlotte is preparing to host its second national political convention in eight years.
Organizers of the 2020 Republican convention Tuesday hosted more than 400 representatives of the media who will cover the gathering next August. They laid out logistics of work spaces at Spectrum Center — the site of the convention — and the Charlotte Convention Center for an expected 15,000 journalists.
Convention officials will take over the arena in mid-July, and over the next five weeks turn it into a made-for-TV convention hall. That includes adding broadcast space and raising the floor 10 feet to accommodate delegates and add offices underneath. President Donald Trump would speak from a stage on the side of the arena, not the end as President Barack Obama did in 2012.
Marcia Lee Kelly, the convention’s president and CEO, lauded the city not only for its hospitality but for its walkable uptown and abundant hotel rooms, restaurants and entertainment venues.
“Charlotte is a city on the rise,” Kelly said.
It was a different city in the late 1990s when Whitney first pursued the idea, enlisting the support of friends and elected officials like then-Mayor Pat McCrory.
“We were the original dreamers,” said McCrory, a former governor. “It was almost like, ‘What the hell. Let’s go for it. I think we knew it was a pie-in-the-sky idea but it set us up for the future.”
A different city
In 1997 Charlotte’s uptown was virtually devoid of street life, especially after 5 p.m.
The city was just three years removed from “The Street of Champions,” a four-block stretch of pop-up bars, tents and temporary storefronts on South Tryon Street erected for the Final Four. The New York Times called it “Potemkin Village with a drawl.”
There was no light rail, no big hotel, few uptown restaurants or clubs. The Charlotte Coliseum on Tyvola Road was miles from uptown. The population was almost half what it is now. Then-state Sen. Bob Rucho, asked what delegates might do after hours, said they could visit Greensboro or Winston-Salem, each 90 minutes away.
But Whitney was undaunted. Together with GOP activists Charles Jonas and Warren Cooksey, he began building bipartisan support for bringing one of the 2000 political conventions to town.
They first tried the Democrats. Their proposal for the 2000 convention failed because the city lacked the requisite hotel rooms for the party, which typically has more delegates than its GOP counterpart.
They used the same proposal to entice Republicans. Charlotte was one of 25 cities that bid for the 2000 Republican convention and one of eight to get a visit from the RNC’s site-selection committee.
Over two days, Charlotteans treated the committee to meals at good restaurants, personalized Charlotte Hornets jerseys and other Carolinas swag. They talked up Charlotte at every opportunity.
But Charlotte failed to make the list of finalists, in large part because the region lacked enough hotel rooms. The convention ended up going to Philadelphia.
“We were David,” Whitney said. “We didn’t quite take down Goliath but we came awfully close.”
‘Icing on the cake’
But their efforts would eventually pay off.
“At first it seemed a little quixotic,” said Bob Morgan, then a staffer and later president of the Charlotte Chamber. “(But) they really planted the seed. It made people in Charlotte believe.”
Over the next few years the city grew. Light rail opened. The airport expanded. Hotels and restaurants opened. Breweries — and real bars — popped up all over.
The Democratic convention came in 2012. Now Trump is expected to be re-nominated in the same arena where Obama launched his own run for a second term.
“As far as Charlotte hosting a presidential nominating convention, I took my own personal victory lap in 2012 when the DNC came here,” said Cooksey, a former city council member. “All the memories (of the earlier effort) flooded back to me them.
“The RNC in 2020 is kind of icing on the cake.”
This story was originally published November 12, 2019 at 5:38 PM.
