Here’s why the stakes are high for this year’s conventions
Walking through Pam Pollard's home in the Oklahoma City suburbs is like stepping into a time portal to past Republican National Conventions.
Pam Pollard stands next to a sign from the 2016 Republic National Convention, Saturday, May 4, 2024, at her home in Midwest City, Okla. For most of those conventions, there was little suspense over who would be the party’s nominee when delegates gathered to cast their votes for the top of the ticket. That’s the case again this year for Republicans, with former President Donald Trump having locked up the GOP nomination early in the primary season.
For people tuning in from far outside the convention halls, the events also serve a purpose. Today’s political convention is a carefully scripted show — one that a party spends months crafting, from choosing a location to the stagecraft, speakers and even some planned surprises. Through much of U.S. history the conventions were where decisions were made on awarding those delegates. That changed in the aftermath of the 1968 Democratic convention, where Hubert Humphrey was nominated despite not having entered a single primary, and critics railed against what they said were years of backroom deals.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Thursday, July 28, 2016. At the first, in 2008, Democrats officially made then-Sen. Barack Obama the nation's first Black major party presidential nominee. Her second was in 2016, when Clinton was the first woman in the U.S. nominated for president by a major party.
“We have a big nation. We have these huge networks at our political parties,” Grinspan said. “And for them all to come together in one city and do an event together, it is really important in building out this national network that runs campaigns. But they might not necessarily be picking the person they want that day.”
Like Pollard, she has paraphernalia and memories, including the 2008 convention where she was the CEO and responsible for moving the entire production on its fourth and final night from the Pepsi Center, a closed arena in downtown Denver, to what was then Invesco Field at Mile High, an open-air stadium that seated thousands more people. There, Obama accepted the nomination.
Pollard's first memory of conventions was during her childhood, when television coverage “took everything off the airways and dominated everything.”Pollard’s first convention in 2004 in New York was memorable as she connected with the New York Police Department because of the shared trauma of terrorism — the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.
Republican vice presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, takes the stage at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2008.
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