2012 Democratic National Convention Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 4–6
By Christopher Durso W
ord came down on Wednesday morning, the sec- ond day of the 2012 Democratic National Conven- tion (DNC), that things would not be proceeding
as planned. Rain had been coming off and on throughout the week, and Thursday night’s forecast wasn’t looking good. Which meant that the culmination of the entire program, the centerpiece production in which President Obama accepted his party’s nomination, wasn’t just going to have to be moved. It would need to be downsized. Drastically. The idea had been to echo Obama’s triumphant accep-
tance speech at the 2008 DNC in Denver, when he bucked tradition and took the stage outside, before a crowd of 84,000 people at Invesco Field at Mile High stadium. In Charlotte, N.C., this year, the Democratic National Convention Com- mittee (DNCC) was going to use 74,000-seat, open-air Bank of America Stadium for the big speech, until the threat of rain necessitated a relocation to the 20,000-seat Time Warner Cable Arena, which had been home to the 2012 DNC’s pro- ceedings throughout the week. For the DNCC, it was a high-profile decision with poten-
tially major political ramifications, because the organization had repeatedly promised to make the 2012 DNC the most “open and accessible” political convention in history. But for the meeting professionals working behind the scenes, it was just another day at the office. “There was always a Plan
B if [the acceptance speech] were to stay within the arena,” said Ron Bracco, executive director of business develop- ment for events for Hargrove Inc., the 2012 DNC’s general services contractor. It was Thursday night, a few hours before Obama’s speech, and Bracco, the Hargrove executive in charge of the DNCC contract, was sitting with Convene in his company’s hospitality lounge at Time Warner, relaxed and smiling. Yes, smiling. “There was always the sense that if rain was
an issue or weather was an issue, that the third night would be kept here,” Bracco said. “A lot of the assets were planned to move from Time Warner Cable Arena on Wednesday night to the stadium. The fact that we are not moving those — we are not doing the fast transitions, the fast changeovers — made the process a little easier.”
AN OPEN INVITATION In some ways, the modern political convention is a planner’s dream, because, as an event that’s designed and built for prime-time television, it’s rigidly scheduled and ruthlessly scripted. While the ostensible purpose of the DNC is to offi- cially nominate the Democratic Party’s candidate for presi- dent, there hasn’t been an actual contested vote — in which the candidate being nominated wasn’t locked in before the convention — since 1980, when Jimmy Carter was challenged
NOVEMBER 2012 PCMA CONVENE 47
PHOTOGRAPHS ON PAGES 48-49 AND 50-51 BY HARGROVE INC.