By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com

November 21, 2007

The Democratic National Convention Committee didn’t talk about winners and losers in its oh-so-cheery announcement of delegation hotel assignments Tuesday.

So let’s just call it half-baked Alaska.

The Alaskan representatives to the convention will be staying at the Sheraton Four Points in Southeast Denver, at I-25 and Hampden Avenue. A walking tour for the Alaskans will include some of Denver’s finest strip shopping centers. Meanwhile, the lights of Pepsi Center and the hip clubs and restaurants of Lower Downtown will flicker very faintly in the distance.

But Alaska is truly only half-baked. The Alaskans are just down Hampden from the Nebraskans. The Cornhuskers got holed up at the Embassy Suites Denver Southeast. So maybe there can be a little détente between the outliers and the Lower 48 on the eight-mile light rail ride to the convention each day.

Clearly, the hotels where the convention committee stashed the state delegates are all reputable and well-appointed. No one, for instance, is staying at any of the finer establishments on East Colfax that specialize in migrant laborers and hourly rentals for a certain kind of working woman.

But if you come to Denver for the Democratic convention and find yourself stuck in the Denver Tech Center or in one of the hotels that served the old Stapleton Airport, you’re not going to be able to differentiate your surroundings from, say, Dover, Del.

Speaking of Delaware, that state’s delegates will find themselves in the suburban splendor of the Marriott South at Park Meadows.

Some of us have friends we don’t visit regularly because that is so far from downtown. Between half-hour shuttle bus, or light-rail rides or slightly quicker rental car trips, the folks from Delaware can cruise the Park Meadows Mall with the delegates from Hawaii, who are also at the Marriott South. Not only do these Democrats get to shop at a suburban mall, they get to rub shoulders with the supporters of Congressman Tom Tancredo, one of America’s most notorious right wing Republican nut jobs. Immigrant-bashing Tom Terrific represents the part of town where the Hawaii and Delaware Democratic delegations will stay.

Does it get any weirder than that?

Well, yeah, it could, if opponents of abortion decide to demonstrate not only at the convention but at the site of what will become the new regional headquarters of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains. The site is just behind the Renaissance Denver Hotel at Stapleton, where the Massachusetts and Maryland delegations will crash. So in addition to a five-mile hump to the convention site, these folks could conceivably wake up to cries of “Baby killer.”

OK, it’s probably a long shot. But you can’t help wondering if Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean is still smarting from being beaten for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination by Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.

Not so, according to the convention committee news release announcing delegate accommodations.

“After a series of hotel site visits this summer, state delegations submitted their hotel requests in September,” the release said. “Their preferences, in addition to room block requests, function and caucus space needs, the number of suites requested and possible (Americans with Disabilities Act) needs, were used to develop assignments.”

Right.

Because, you know, without these totally objective criteria there was a chance that the critical New York and California delegations could have ended up in Tom Tancredo’s congressional district instead of the Adam’s Mark on downtown’s 16^th Street Mall. Or the Colorado delegation could have been staying at Hampden and I-25 instead of at the Grand Hyatt.

And Vermont, where Howard Dean served as governor, could have been at the Tech Center rather than the ultra-hip Magnolia Hotel with its nightly cookies-and-milk buffet, a short walk from Pepsi Center.

There were other winners in the hotel sweepstakes whose clout is not so clear. New Mexico, Bill Richardson’s state, and Virginia, home of erstwhile presidential wannabe and U.S. Senate contender Mark Warner got the Crowne Plaza Downtown. In what looks like a diversity play, West Virginia will join Vermont at the Magnolia. Ohio, a huge state that can turn the 2008 presidential election is at the Curtis Hotel downtown.

Here’s the news release with the entire list.

Decide for yourself who won, who lost and why. Just remember that the biggest loser was Florida. That state got stripped of its delegates for moving up their selection process in defiance of Democratic leaders.

So if next August you see folks from the Sunshine State emerging from a no-tell motel on Colfax, you’ll know why.

Copyright 2007 by Jim Spencer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.