Given the recent events in New York City regarding police actions, the murder of two police officers, and the rhetoric of Mayor Bill de Blasio, it appears the campaign to bring the 2016 Democratic National Convention to Brooklyn may now be imperiled.
Report from the Washington Post:
A source with extensive knowledge of the thinking of the well-heeled and politically potent host committee seeking to bring the 2016 Democratic National Convention to New York City made a rather bold prediction last week. The “convention now is never coming to Brooklyn,” the whisperer said. [Emphasis added]
This blunt statement was part of a larger conversation about Mayor Bill de Blasio and the state of his mayoralty in the wake of the killings of Police Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu on Dec. 20. My informer believed that de Blasio’s tattered relationship with the New York Police Department (NYPD) and the controversy swirling around it would give the Democratic National Committee (DNC) cold feet.
This was a far cry from the attitude my source said was on display a week earlier at the mayor’s residence on Dec. 12. “All the movers and shakers of New York,” the person said, descended on Gracie Mansion for a breakfast to cheerlead the city’s latest bid to host a political convention. They were “very confident they were going to get the convention.”
That would leave either Columbus, Ohio, or Philadelphia. Given that the Republican National Committee has already chosen Cleveland, Ohio, as their gathering point for 2016, I’m betting that Philly is going to get a lot of new found attention from the DNC.
On the other hand, by the time the convention rolls around in the summer of 2016, which is a year and a half a way, the events and racial turmoil in New York of the past couple months may be mostly forgotten by the public. The bottom line, I wouldn’t want to be in charge of the decision making process.
