Denver still in the race

WE'VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com

The Denver 2008 Host Committee executive director claims things are not as bad as they've been made out to be. From the Rocky Mountain News:

Debbie Willhite, the Denver 2008 Host Committee executive director, said the city’s proposal was characterized as "extremely thorough" by a member of the site selection committee just this week. Still, Willhite said, the report Wednesday in the Hotline On Call, a blog of the National Journal, casts Denver in an unfavorable light.

"It does not reflect well on our bid, and it does not reflect well on our city," she said. "But I would say also, unequivocally, it does not reflect the DNC’s current thinking about where Denver stands in this process. I was reassured of that profusely by the executive director of the Democratic National Committee," Willhite said.

The report, published Thursday in the National Journal, stated that New York City and Minneapolis-St. Paul are "right outside the winner’s circle." It also stated that an unidentified Democrat briefed about Denver’s offerings called them a disaster and that the city’s lack of a union hotel "remains an obstacle" even though organized labor in Denver suspended its opposition to the bid.

A DNC spokesman declined to comment about the blog posting.

Marc Ambinder, the blog reporter, said he stood by his story. "To be honest, there were some initially who were dismayed by the quality of the bid," he said. "The technical aspects were not up to the expectations that they had for (Denver), and that disappointed them."

Ambinder said Denver’s subsequent submissions under Willhite "have gotten progressively better" and that many of the technical concerns have been answered. "The question (now) is whether the DNC will be willing to give Denver a shot to sort of prove their bona fides and really go into the nitty gritty of these bids," said Ambinder, who has covered national politics for five years.

"I think by the end of this month we will know whether they’ve narrowed it down to (New York and Minneapolis-St. Paul) or whether they’re still keeping Denver in mind," he said.

Willhite, a national convention organizer for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns, is confident Denver will be the winner. She called the report in the blog "unfortunate." "We’d love them to retract it, but the fact of the matter is that someone at the DNC with some sort of title gave the reporter this luscious little quote," Willhite said. "Obviously, it was somebody who doesn’t want to come to Denver."

I think the Hotline is paritally to blame for this. Their original posting said:

Others confirmed that the general impression among site selection members of Denver was not positive.

But the revised posting, which is only readable from the main blog, says:

Others confirmed that the general impression among site selection members of Denver was not positive, although a third iteration of Denver's bid, submitted last week, has been better received.

That's a huge difference, because the bid should hopefully be judged on its latest version. I'm not sure why the Hotline has not updated the posting at the original link, but neither the article at Daily Kos nor the column in the Denver Post referenced the updated entry, and therefore they made things sound worse then they might be. And since the source of the comment is unknown, one can not assume it is unbiased. For now, I will assume Willhite's characterization of the DNC Executive Director's comments are true, and that Denver is still in this thing.