GOP Proposes San Diego for Convention

Republicans selected San Diego Tuesday as the proposed site of their national presidential nominating convention in 1996--24 years after the city was ingloriously stripped of the 1972 party conclave at virtually the last moment under a cloud of political scandal.

The choice of San Diego for the 1996 Republican National Convention is contingent on negotiation of a satisfactory financial package with the city. But state and national party leaders said Tuesday they are confident there will be no hitches and that the decision essentially had been made.

Final ratification is scheduled at a meeting of the Republican National Committee in Washington in January.

The proposed dates of the meeting in the San Diego Convention Center are Aug. 12-15, 1996. While the early political posturing has begun, the Republican presidential sweepstakes appears to be wide open at the moment.

Democrats will convene in Chicago later in August, presumably to nominate President Clinton for a second term.

The contest for the 1996 meeting earlier narrowed to three cities: San Diego, New Orleans and San Antonio.

The news was greeted with jubilation in California’s southernmost city, the second most populous in the state and sixth in the nation, but one that often has suffered a civic inferiority complex and a lack of recognition for its assets.

Mayor Susan Golding, who has led a six-month effort by civic leaders to win the convention, said: “This will give us a chance to show the whole world that San Diego is the cosmopolitan, sophisticated city it is.”

To get the convention, the San Diego host committee agreed to raise between $10 million and $16 million from private sources to pay for organizing costs. The city is guaranteeing the GOP 20,000 class-A hotel rooms, adequate police protection and a reconfiguration of the convention hall seating.

The meeting will draw an estimated 20,000 delegates, party officials, media representatives and guests who are expected to spend as much as $41 million. Even so, that will not yield the city a major financial bonanza compared to a normal August week in the height of the tourist season.

The real windfall to the city is in exposure in the national and world media.

“This helps put San Diego on the world stage and it’s about time,” said Dave Nuffer, a Chamber of Commerce leader who complains to this day that the 1972 GOP convention “was cruelly whisked away” from San Diego.

This will be the third GOP convention to be held in California. The first was in San Francisco in 1956 when Dwight D. Eisenhower was renominated. In 1964, the Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater for President over New York Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller in a titanic ideological struggle, also in San Francisco.

That meeting effectively ended the power of the so-called Rockefeller wing of moderates in the Republican Party and spawned the Ronald Reagan era in American politics.

Democratic conventions were held in San Francisco in 1920 and 1984 and in Los Angeles in 1960.

The Republican National Convention was set for San Diego in 1972, to triumphantly nominate Richard Nixon for a second term. Officially, the meeting was moved to Miami Beach a bare three months before it was scheduled to be held because of concerns over the adequacy of hotel rooms, the convention hall and possible labor problems.

What really scared off the GOP, however, political experts and insiders agreed, was the fuss raised when columnist Jack Anderson reported on a leaked memo attributed to ITT lobbyist Dita Beard. In the memo, Beard was alleged to have claimed that the Justice Department dropped an antitrust suit against the firm after it contributed $400,000 to the San Diego convention effort.

One of ITT’s Sheraton hotels was to have served as a San Diego convention headquarters.

Since 1972, San Diego has grown to 1.2 million people and has played host to baseball’s World Series, football’s Super Bowl, yachting’s America’s Cup and the opening this month of the Mighty Morphin Power Ranger concert tour.

But nothing has salved the ignominy of losing the 1972 convention until now.

“This is a great moment for ‘America’s Finest City,’ ” said California Gov. Pete Wilson, who was San Diego mayor in 1972 and is among those figuring in speculation about potential GOP presidential candidates in 1996.

For weeks, local leaders have believed that San Diego was in the lead to get the 1996 convention, but none have been willing to say so publicly, lest the comments jinx matters. Four years ago, the city thought it had the inside track for the GOP convention, only to see it go to Houston.

The 1996 convention would be held in the city’s gleaming Convention Center opened beside San Diego Bay in 1989 after construction costing $161 million.

The one sticking point for San Diego had been the center’s modest size compared to the Alamodome (48,000) in San Antonio and the Louisiana Superdome (40,000) in New Orleans.

The main ballroom of the center will be redesigned to seat 19,400--including 1,500 in new skyboxes--and to accommodate the needs of network television. As part of its bid package, San Diego employed a “virtual reality” video showing how the ballroom would look.

“High tech helped convince the Republican National Committee to come here,” Mayor Golding said. To make sure that the Convention Center’s size is never again a problem, the City Council has approved expansion.

There were reports that the controversy over Proposition 187, the successful November ballot initiative that cuts off state aid to illegal immigrants, caused some concern among moderate Republicans about a San Diego selection. But Michael Grebe, a Wisconsin member of the Republican National Committee and chairman of the site selection committee, said this was not a major factor in the decision.

Grebe also discounted the possibility that going to Wilson’s home city might enhance his chances of winning the GOP presidential nomination. He said he has never seen the convention city have that sort of impact. Besides, Wilson has said he has no plans to become a candidate.

The governor welcomed the news, however, as an opportunity to demonstrate the success of the “California Comeback” after several years of recession, state fiscal crisis, fire, earthquake, riots and other disasters.

“Republicans understand how important California is to the country and recognize that California continues to lead the nation in making fundamental change,” Wilson said.

Indeed, Grebe said that holding the convention in California is recognition of the state’s importance to GOP chances of winning back the White House. Most political experts claim that Clinton would have no chance of winning reelection without California’s 54 electoral votes, one-fifth of the 270 needed to win the presidency.

While the 1996 GOP meeting is a big draw, it will not be the biggest convention San Diego has lured. Next year, a national convention of Baptists is expected to draw 40,000 and the international convention of Alcoholics Anonymous 80,000.

But the Republicans can give San Diego something that the Baptists and others cannot, something that San Diego craves: international media coverage to tout its weather, desirability as a tourist destination and business-friendly political climate.

“There will be very few people anywhere that won’t know what San Diego has to offer when this is over,” Golding said.

Golding said that site selection committee members were impressed during their visit to discover such support for bringing the convention to San Diego among waiters, busboys and desk clerks, a kind of civic boosterism that might be hard to find in more blase big cities.

The Chamber of Commerce estimates that the convention will pump tens of millions of dollars into local businesses, although those businesses would probably have made as much money even if the Republicans had gone to San Antonio or New Orleans.

August is the prime tourist season in San Diego, with hotels reaching peak occupancy and tourist sites brimming. To make room for the Republicans, conventions will have to be booted from the convention center, and prospective guests canceled from their hotels.

Golding, a Republican and close ally of Wilson, was a City Council member, a sub-cabinet member for Gov. George Deukmejian, and a county supervisor before being elected mayor in 1992. She dodged questions about whether the convention will help her political career.

But asked if she would be opposed to addressing the convention delegates on national television, she smiled broadly and said, “Certainly not.”

Stall reported from Los Angeles, Perry from San Diego.

More on San Diego

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