DNCC vs Host Committee

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Dan Slater explains the difference:

Right now, there are two separate organizations who are charged with running the Convention planning effort. The first is the Denver 2008 Host Committee, which most of you have heard about. Denver 2008 is locally-run, and is the group that formed the convention bid and are now working to raise the money and volunteers to support that bid. Right now, anybody locally who is working on the Convention is probably working with this group. However, there is a separate organization, known as the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC), which is the arm of the DNC charged with running the Convention for the DNC. The DNCC is the group that gets the FEC grant to run the Convention, and in the end, the DNCC will be spending most of the money raised by the Denver 2008 Host Committee.

In the end, the DNCC is primarily concerned with making sure that what goes on at the Convention is a good portrayal of Democrats in general and our nominee in specific. The Host Committee, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with making sure that Denver looks good (by making the Convention look good). That’s quite an over-simplification, but it probably gets the point across. The DNC wants people running the DNCC to be folks who know what putting together a successful Convention is about, and who have done this in the past — and who answer to the DNC. That’s why the team running the DNCC looks a little different than those running the Host Committee.