Georgia Democrats are not thrilled that the 2024 Democratic National Convention will be held in Chicago over Atlanta, seeing the decision as a slap in the face to a state that secured Democratic victories in recent years — including a Senate majority in 2022 and the White House in 2020.
Democrats selected Chicago on Tuesday, a city coming off a major Democratic win after voters elected a more progressive candidate to become the next mayor of Chicago. Holding the convention in Illinois, a blue stronghold in the Midwest, sets the tone for Democrats as the 2024 cycle approaches. DNC officials received letters from 35 Democrats across nine states pointing to the success of the Democratic Party in Midwestern states such as Michigan and Illinois.
CHICAGO WILL HOST 2024 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION
However, advocates in Georgia also aggressively campaigned to President Joe Biden and his allies for hosting rights, citing Atlanta as the battleground for the civil rights movement and calling on Democrats to turn their focus to the South, where states tend to lean red, and Democrats will face difficult elections that could flip the Senate majority back to Republicans.
“It feels a little bit like a slap in the face,” one Georgia Democratic operative told the Hill. “You know, there’s a lot that goes into this — hotels and transportation and all that. But there’s the symbolism to consider too, and I think it would have been a strong statement to say, ‘Hey, Georgia has delivered for us, and we’re not taking that for granted.’”
Georgia Democrats obtained more than $20 million in financial commitments from donors, sponsors, and corporations, working to show Biden and the Democratic National Committee that Atlanta should be rewarded for securing their majority in the Senate with Sen. Raphael Warnock's (D-GA) win against Republican Herschel Walker in a runoff election in 2022.
“We’ve won three Senate seats in two years. We are doing the work, and we need the Democratic Party to just get out of this mindset that the South is this kind of bastion of conservatism when that is not at all the case,” one Georgia Democrat said.
More than 65 current and former Democratic officials at the local, state, and federal level wrote letters similar to the Midwestern advocates, telling the president that “everything we have accomplished as a party since January of 2021 can be traced back to Georgia, and specifically, to the metro Atlanta area which swung the state in our favor.”
“Democratic turnout in the state of Georgia is the single greatest reason that you and Vice President Harris are in the White House today instead of Donald Trump, and it is the single greatest reason why Democrats have maintained a majority in the United States Senate,” the letter said per the Hill.
In 2020, Biden defeated former President Donald Trump with a key victory in Georgia — the first time since 1992 that a Democratic candidate won the state.
DNC officials chose Chicago, likely influenced by a lobbying effort from the AFL-CIO. The organization argued that Atlanta's contentious history with organized labor, and its too-few union-backed hotels, made it unfit to serve as a location for the largest convergence of Democratic leaders and supporters that is expected to draw 5,000 to 7,000 delegates and alternates and bring about 50,000 visitors to the Windy City.
“This is nowhere near enough to meet delegates’ needs. Union delegates and guests who choose union hotels as a matter of conscience would need to compete over limited rooms. Not every state delegate and visitor who wanted to show labor solidarity would be able to do so,” AFL-CIO's letter stated, also pointing to the price point of the hotels as a burden for some attendees.
However, this decision still struck a nerve with Georgia Democrats, who believe the success of the Democratic Party could not have been so strong without the state, especially while working under mostly Republican leadership at the state level.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“That feels just really disingenuous because you’re punishing people who work really hard for the Democratic Party because their state has really crushed the union movement,” a Georgia Democrat said. “And to say that because the city of Atlanta didn’t do enough to magically create unions or union hotels overnight, that they should be disqualified, it’s just insulting."
"It’s insulting to organizers across the South who live in states where Republicans want to destroy the union movement,” they added.