Mayor Johnson Should be Honest about the RNC
Two hundred million dollars for Milwaukee. Mayor Cavalier Johnson has been beating this drum as he sells the Republican Convention as a benefit for Milwaukee. Aside from the obvious moral question of whether $200 million (or any amount) justifies welcoming a fascist convention, is Johnson even telling the truth?
We have seen this story before. The 2016 Convention in Cleveland also estimated around $200 million in benefits from the RNC. However, the actual impact fell millions short of this goal. Milwaukee seems doomed to repeat it. No matter which experts you ask, all agree that $200 million is a huge overestimate. Some put a more realistic number at $55 million, while others go as low as $20 million. These numbers seem much more realistic knowing that the 2021 NBA playoffs brought in around $58 million. Expecting the RNC to bring in 4 times as much money as the NBA playoffs is not just optimistic. At best, it is delusional, at worst, it is outright lying.
Now, of the money coming into Milwaukee, who will it be going to? Property owners for one. Luxury home and AirBnb owners are happily renting out their properties for as high as $7,000 a night. Given the housing affordability crisis, can this even be called a benefit for Milwaukee? Every luxury or AirBnb home means one less affordable home in the city. We all know that trickle down economics is a farce, so we cannot expect the profits of property owners to reach the rest of us. In fact, a study of Republican and Democratic Conventions from 1978-2005 found that there was “no discernible impact on employment, personal income, or personal income per capita in the cities where the events were held.” Money brought in by conventions often goes out as quickly as it comes in.
Hosting a convention is also incredibly expensive. Even though Milwaukee will be receiving $75 million in Federal grants for security, it is unclear if this will be able to cover everything. Security expenses alone will include an estimated 4,500 outside police officers, expensive requests from the Milwaukee Police Department like a $1.3 million Mobile Command Post, and liability insurance for the event that even covers a nuclear attack. Unlikely nuclear threat aside, the security costs of the convention should not be overlooked. Especially once one realizes that while tennis balls and hard water bottles will be prohibited in the security zone, guns will be allowed. This is a security nightmare just waiting to happen. Besides security expenses, the city also has legal expenses as it has already been sued by the ACLU for limiting protests. There are sure to be more lawsuits to come.
Governor Evers himself signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency in Milwaukee during the convention. In practical terms, this empowers outside law enforcement to make arrests, puts the National Guard on standby, and directs all state agencies to support. Besides the uneasiness of the National Guard and police officers being given free reign in our city, all of these additional security measures are costs that the city of Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin must pay. Evers though, to his credit, did slash $9 million from going towards the convention. His reasoning being “I object to the Legislature providing this level of funding to Visit Milwaukee when they have failed to adequately fund so many important priorities for our state, from child care to higher education.” While it certainly is too little too late, Mayor Johnson could take note from Governor Evers. Shoveling money at the RNC, especially when that money could be going to provide for Milwaukeeans, is unacceptable.
Before approving the convention, Milwaukee’s Common Council asked that the RNC be required to pay Milwaukee. Johnson objected, calling it a “poison pill”. As a ‘compromise,’ the framework approved by the Common Council states that the city and host committee "shall engage in a good faith effort to come to an agreement under which the host committee shall provide to the city funding consistent with the dollar amount normally provided to a host city after previous in-person Republican National Conventions." Is the RNC a good faith actor though?
The RNC cannot even be bothered to put the correct image of our city on their website, initially using an image of Ho Chi Minh City instead of Milwaukee. Trump also recently called Milwaukee a ‘horrible city’. Then there are the shady finances of the RNC itself. RNC Host Committee Secretary Gerard Randal resigned after it came to light that a Milwaukee non-profit he ran, Milwaukee Education Partnership, had falsified tax records and paid him $60,000 for work that was never completed. The RNC itself is moving towards bankruptcy and prioritizing paying Trump’s legal bills. The convention planning committee asked various venues to keep their calendars empty so they could be filled with RNC events. At the time of publication they have yet to follow through with this and it looks like both the Riverside and Pabst theaters will be empty during the convention. When it came time for the RNC to dole out money after its 2020 convention in Charlotte, the process was filled with broken commitments and lack of transparency. The Milwaukee convention is shaping up to be a repeat of the same. In terms of raising money, both Democratic and Republican Conventions have also been struggling to secure corporate sponsors. Kohls and ManpowerCo are some of the more recent corporations to decline sponsoring the Republican Convention.
It is a sad day when Kohls is on the right side of history and the Mayor of Milwaukee is not. The RNC clearly cannot be trusted. Once again we see Mayor Johnson either being grossly ignorant of reality, or outright lying to enrich business elites. While canceling the entire convention may seem like a pipe dream, we must at least ensure that Milwaukeeans are fully informed about what this convention really means for our city. Mayor Johnson cannot be let off the hook for his dishonesty.
