Houston vies for 2024 DNC

It would be nice, but I feel like I’ve seen this movie before and I know how it ends.

Houston is vying to host the 2024 Democratic National Convention held the summer before the next presidential election, in which Texas could be a highly-sought battleground state.

The city is competing with Chicago, Atlanta and several other major cities to host the internationally-televised, week-long presidential nominating extravaganza before voters head to ballot boxes in 2024. City Council approved the bid on Wednesday.

Officials are betting that Houston’s track record as a seasoned host to Super Bowls, petroleum conventions and, this weekend, the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting will help lure the DNC to the Bayou City. Another bonus? Its position as a Democratic stronghold in one of the country’s largest conservative states.

Texas’s rapidly changing electorate — and its role at the center of national debates on gun control, abortion rights and immigration — may make it an ideal place to energize voters within the state and across the country, said Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at University of Texas Austin.

“The fact that Houston is even a possible destination for the convention shows the degree to which Texas has become a competitive state in the eyes of Democrats,” Blank said.

For those hoping to turn the Lone Star state blue, he said, hosting the convention and the media spectacle it ensues would offer a valuable chance to reach undecided voters and highlight up-and-coming local politicians.

The same arguments were made in 2020 as I recall, and we lost out to Milwaukee, in the much more traditional swing state of Wisconsin. I can already see Atlanta having the edge on us for similar reasons. I’ll be happy to be proven wrong.

And for the record:

The city is not being considered to host the 2024 Republican National Convention, city officials said, because the dates “conflicted with other events” at convention venues.

I know someone was wondering about this, so there you have it.

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