President Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) have made their pick for where the party’s 2024 national convention will be hosted — and it’s not the Big Apple.
The DNC has selected Chicago as the destination for next year’s convention, where the party nominates its presidential ticket, over New York City and Atlanta, according to a Tuesday morning report from the New York Times. Although Biden has yet to launch his reelection campaign, the 80-year-old is expected to be chosen as the party’s nominee yet again next year.
The decision comes after months of Mayor Eric Adams’ administration aggressively lobbying for hosting the event in the five boroughs, highlighting the city’s expansive public transportation network and marquee venues like the Madison Square Garden and the Jacob Javits Center as key selling points.
When asked about Chicago getting the convention over New York following an unrelated press conference on Tuesday morning, Adams said “everybody wants to win” but that it’s time to come together as Democrats to support Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ reelection bid.
“We were able to show New York, show the country, our product. It was very exciting, very competitive. We knew it was down to Atlanta, New York and Chicago … So now it’s about, the intramural scrimmage is over and it’s time for us to put on one uniform and that’s the Democratic Party,” he told reporters in Times Square.
“Everybody wants to win, but I’m excited about the Biden and Harris team,” he added.
Adams has said the convention would be an economic boon for the city as it continues to recover from the coronavirus pandemic by filling thousands of hotel rooms with delegates and generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue for the local economy.
The mayor’s bid also got a significant push from leaders of the city’s major labor unions like the Hotel Trades Council (HTC), who paid for a television ad promoting the city as a prime destination for the event due to its bona fides as a union town. He also emphasized New York’s standing as the “safest big city in America” and it being the country’s largest media market, during a rally last month to draw the convention here.
Last summer, Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul took DNC delegates on a multi-day tour of the city to show off all it has to offer.
The last time the city hosted the convention was 1992 when former President Bill Clinton was first nominated for the White House.
The administration’s efforts to attract the convention were led by Adams’ former chief of staff, Frank Carone, who stepped down from his post at the start of the year to resume running his own lobbying firm. Carone, in a statement to amNewYork Metro, called the news “disappointing,” especially considering the bid and story he put together.
“It was a great privilege to work alongside my colleagues who together with our private sector partners offered what I believed [was] an incredible bid and story as this would have celebrated NYC’s 100 year anniversary from the first Democratic convention in 1924,” he said. “Then rebounding from the 1918 pandemic and now rebounding under democratic leadership from the 2020 pandemic. All I can do is quote what a member of the DNC bid team said: ‘your team left it all on the field.’ That is certainly true.”
Carone also congratulated Chicago in a Tweet Tuesday morning.
“It will be a triumphant event and year for Democrats in 2024,” he wrote. “Congratulations, Chicago!”
Additional reporting by Dean Moses
