Lagging Democratic Convention Plans Picking Up Steam

A newly unified effort to organize this summer’s Democratic National Convention, scrambling to make up for missteps and lost time, is beginning to make headway against a deeper fund-raising gap than officials previously had disclosed.

In recent weeks, Mayor Richard Riordan, who paid little attention to the convention planning during 1999--a year of charter reform, school reform and other preoccupations--suddenly has become a major fixture at the convention’s office. Having ousted the former host committee’s chief executive and replaced her with a top aide, Noelia Rodriguez, Riordan now comes to the host committee’s downtown office two to three times a week to work the phones as part of the fund-raising campaign.

“At the end of the day, no one was going to get those calls done but him,” said one person close to the fund-raising effort. “And he’s doing it. Some of it’s incremental, but he’s getting it done.”

His task, however, is greater than officials once admitted. In recent months, host committee leaders--who run one part of the convention planning, while the Democratic National Convention Committee runs the other half--consistently said they were just $9 million short of their $35.3-million goal.

A Feb. 1 memo from Lucy McCoy, then the chief executive of the committee, said: “We have $9 million left to raise.”

But officials now acknowledge that those numbers included not just cash on hand but also what aides call “soft pledges.” Thus, the memo overstated the group’s actual fund-raising success. Those uncertain numbers had been a sore spot with the Democratic National Convention Committee, charged with actually putting on the convention.

Compounding the problem was a sense that the host committee had lost crucial weeks early this year, as its fund-raising efforts floundered and other decision-making slowed down. Basic questions such as what logo the host group should adopt and where it should hold its media party were languishing, officials said.

Riordan’s takeover of the committee changed that, sources said, partly because Rodriguez has brought new energy to the organization and partly because Riordan is now fully engaged in the campaign. On her first day at work, Rodriguez approved a site for the media party; by the end of her first week, she had commissioned an artist to produce a logo.

Now that he is personally involved in the fund-raising, Riordan’s first mission has been to jump-start an effort that had essentially stalled early this year. The mayor has been joined in that undertaking by Eli Broad, a billionaire businessman and die-hard Democrat. Thanks largely to Riordan and Broad, the host committee last week finally reached the point where it actually had as much money as it has long said it did.

According to host committee officials, the organization had $25.6 million on Thursday, which is actually less than the organization reported in “commitments” on Feb. 1. But the money now is on hand, not just promised, officials said.

The committee got another bump late Thursday when Broad put it over the $26-million mark by contributing $1 million of his own money to the effort.

“We now have our arms around real numbers,” Rodriguez said. “It’s a new day.”

Still, that leaves a long way to go. The host committee had promised to raise all its money in 1999 in order to avoid competing with the Democratic Party for contributors. Its failure to meet that goal is making life difficult for Democrats, since President Clinton and other party leaders increasingly are leaning on local activists for presidential donations, siphoning off money that might otherwise go to pay for the convention.

To the extent that the Democratic Party and the host committee compete for some of the same donors, the host committee is at a disadvantage. That’s because the party can offer suites or access to the convention whereas the host committee does not control the interior of the convention.

The host committee has its own perks--not the least of which is that a donation to it is tax-deductible--and it is reaching to a different group of donors than the party’s traditional base.

“To us, a donation to the host committee is an investment in Los Angeles,” Rodriguez said.

That broadens the list of likely donors. Riordan is particularly effective at tapping that group, Rodriguez and others said, because he is a Republican who has long been active in raising money for civic and political causes.

Broad, Rodriguez and others remain optimistic that the money will be there. Although below expectations, the host committee has raised more money so far than Chicago’s similar group had raised at this point in 1996, when the convention was held there.

Meanwhile, the Democratic National Convention Committee, which is responsible for spending the money that the host committee raises, is shifting gears as well.

Now that he has secured the nomination, Vice President Al Gore is moving to place some of his trusted deputies in key roles.

Gore helped select the convention chief executive, Lydia Camarillo. She has received mixed reviews--liked by some leaders but considered under-experienced by others--and she has become a lightning rod for some local officials unhappy with the progress of the convention planning. Despite that grumbling, Democratic leaders here and in Nashville, where the Gore campaign is based, say their confidence in Camarillo remains strong and her job secure.

Partly in an effort to combat the public perception of a languishing effort, the Democratic Convention group also has begun trumpeting its achievements--from the selection of headquarters hotels to the naming of a security team and credentialing officials.

Gore loyalist Marcia Hale has been given the job of coordinating new additions to the convention planning team. Hale, who headed intergovernmental relations for the Clinton White House, is reporting directly to Tony Coelho, a top Gore operative who has played a key role in the convention preparations.

Coelho was in Los Angeles last week, attending to convention details and assuring local officials that the planning is on track.

Another new member of the crew, Catherine Moore, a respected, Washington-based consultant, also traveled last week to Los Angeles. She brings her experience with the 1996 convention to the local crew, which she will help guide through its public and media outreach.

As the convention planning lurches toward its final stages, several behind-the-scenes officials said they are most encouraged by the new cooperation between the host committee and its party counterpart.

Signs of that cooperation show up in big ways and small. The two sides now are holding weekly planning conferences to compare notes, a break from their formerly standoffish relationship. A recent news release listed the spokesmen for both organizations as contacts, a break with the previous tradition of each group making its announcements separately.

Much of the credit for that new cooperation appears to go to Broad. Sources say he became impatient with the bickering and bad press surrounding the convention, and forcibly brought the two sides together.

“I arranged meetings every Tuesday morning,” Broad said in an interview last week. “Now, everybody knows what everybody’s doing. They’re working well together. They’re starting to speak with one voice.”