Milwaukee will host the 2020 Democratic National Convention, party leaders announced Monday, highlighting the battleground state of Wisconsin that helped elect President Donald Trump and now will launch an opponent who could oust him.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez chose Milwaukee over Houston and Miami after deliberations lingered longer than party leaders or officials from the three finalist cities had expected.
“Where you hold our convention is a very strong statement of your values and who and what we are fighting for,” Perez said Monday surrounded by state and local officials.
Perez praised Milwaukee’s diversity and its labour unions, along with Wisconsin’s working-class identity. He called it an ideal backdrop for Democrats to launch a fall campaign to reclaim the White House four years after Trump stunningly outpaced Hillary Clinton across the old industrial belt of the upper Midwest and Great Lakes.
“The Democratic Party has again become an every ZIP code party,” Perez said. “We’re listening to people in every corner of the country.”
The convention is scheduled for July 13-16, 2020.
It will be the first time in over a century that Democrats will nominate their presidential candidate in a Midwestern city other than Chicago. Instead, the spotlight will shine for a week on a metro area of about 1.6 million people.
Once dubbed as “The Machine Shop of the World,” the city is the birthplace of Harley-Davidson motorcycles and is known for its enduring love affair with beer — a trait displayed Monday as Perez and surrounding dignitaries closed their celebratory news conference with a toast.
Republicans are set to gather in Charlotte, the largest city in battleground North Carolina, on Aug. 24-27, 2020.
Perez noted that the convention site doesn’t determine the November outcome, but Democrats see plenty of symbolism in Milwaukee after a bitter 2016 election defined by Clinton being nearly swept in what her campaign aides had confidently called a Midwestern “Blue Wall.” That band of states twice sided with President Barack Obama, but Clinton held only Minnesota, ceding Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania — a combined 64 of the necessary 270 electoral votes — as white working-class voters flocked to Trump.
It was the first time since 1984 that Republicans claimed Wisconsin in a presidential election. Afterward, Clinton took withering criticism for not once visiting Wisconsin as a general election candidate.