Who pays for the political conventions?

Dear editor:

Well, the political conventions are over, and I hope you enjoyed them. After all, you paid for them. Really? Read on.

There was a time when the national political conventions served a purpose and truly selected the nominees of their parties, even though it was not as democratic as today’s system of primaries. I remember as a child listening to the conventions on the radio and on early (black and white) television. When it came time for the selection of the presidential nominee I would take a piece of paper and down the left side list all of the states alphabetically, and across the top number wide columns 1, 2, 3, etc. These would be for the many ballots it would take to choose a presidential nominee.

First would come the nominating speeches, seconding speeches, and the endless parades and displays for each candidate. Then, as the roll call of the states was called I would enter into the first column the votes placed for each of the candidates. I can still hear it now, “The great state of so and so places 23.5 votes for Jack so and so, 14 votes for Bob so and so and 8.5 votes for Ted so and so.” At the end of the first roll call it was rare for a candidate to have enough votes for the nomination, unless of course they were dealing with the re-election of a sitting president.

And so, when no one had the majority of votes, the states and caucuses would go into closed door, smoke filled meetings to see if they would change their votes and back what they considered an electable nominee. Was it democratic? Of course not. But that was the purpose of the convention….to find a nominee. Then would follow roll call two and three and however number of roll calls it would take for one candidate to garner enough votes to win the nomination. One convention took 17 days and endless roll calls to find a leader. The last time it took more than one roll call for a Democratic nominee was in 1952 when the party nominated Adlai Stevenson. Adlai who?

After this was done the party would then take up the matter of a vice-presidential nominee, and go through the same routine. Of course the presidential nominee would name his choice, but the convention didn’t always follow that advice. Not like today when one person chooses who will be the running mate that is a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Even though they weren’t democratic, the conventions served a real purpose and were more than the party oriented, paid for, four day advertisements and food filled parties that they are today. They are nothing more than speech filled days aimed at getting America’s vote. And nominees didn’t always give acceptance speeches. In fact, in 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first nominee to appear at a convention and give an acceptance speech.

So how do we pay for the conventions, as I noted in the first paragraph? The U.S. government pays the two parties $34 million ($17 million each) to hold these useless parties. That’s right, $34 million of our tax monies. Now that amount of money against a country that has a national debt of $9 trillion may seem like chump change. But guess who the chumps are.