When Kansas City made a play seven years ago to host the 2016 Republican National Convention, one of the biggest hurdles, besides money, was that we didn’t have the adequate space for the big event.
Well, a lot has changed since then. Not only in the city and surrounding area, but also in the GOP, which for the last four years has done nothing to discourage right-wing extremists.
If the latter were the only reason to question whether Kansas City should try to host the 2024 RNC, that would be enough. But it’s not. The cost, disruption and potential for political violence immediately come to mind. All of these should outweigh the reflexive cheerleading that such an event would be an economic boost.
It’s not clear that even that is true, though Mayor Quinton Lucas is excited.
“Regardless of the politics, it’s important to create opportunities for hoteliers and restaurateurs, particularly those who were impacted by the pandemic over the last year and a half,” Lucas said.
But hosting the RNC or any political convention in today’s polarized and volatile political climate is not the same celebration that comes with an event like the World Cup, where folks show up to cheer, eat Kansas City’s finger-licking BBQ and drink well-crafted beers.
A large radius of a convention city ends up cordoned off from the general population to provide security for delegates, causing a traffic nightmare for everybody else.
At best, political conventions really only offset the normal economic earning that the convention interrupts in the host city, Eric Heberlig, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, told us.
That’s why, he said, fewer cities are interested in hosting. They don’t want the costs, the disruption or the headaches that Kansas City doesn’t need, either.
It’s expensive for the local host committee, which is expected to raise more than $60 million from private donors. Bidding for the 2016 RNC cost Kansas City $850,000, including more than $250,000 from taxpayers. That money is just gone.
And it’s money that might have been better spent addressing some of the city’s most pressing problems, like homelessness, affordable housing and gun violence.
Hosting the RNC certainly wouldn’t help poor people in Kansas City.
And we agree with City Councilman Eric Bunch, who said he doesn’t support hosting because, “the Republican Party is unwilling to step up and disavow some of the extremists who might come with a party like this.”
When the Rev. Darron Edwards, pastor of United Believers Community Church, heard Kansas City would make a bid for the convention, he said his first thought was, “Don’t chase the dollar.”
Edwards, a founder of the community and police gap-bridging group called Getting to the Heart of the Matter, said: “Kansas City faces Herculean challenges, namely a high rate of unsolvable crime and murders, an out of touch police department and racial tensions on the brink of an explosion.
