CHICAGO — Energy is exploding around the Democratic National Convention, with tickets, venues and hotel rooms spiking in demand as Vice President Kamala Harris prepares to become the first Black and Asian American woman to formally accept a major-party nomination.
Credentials are at a premium. Events are growing in size and number. Some corporate clients are sending more people, while others are extending their stays.
Since Harris moved to the top of the Democratic ballot, a deluge of new requests has flooded in for entry into the main event space at the United Center and surrounding bashes, people close to the convention and event-planning say.
Chris Korge, national finance chair for the Democratic National Committee, who has worked in Democratic presidential politics for decades, said he’s fielding streams of calls and texts of last-minute requests for entry around the four-day convention, which starts Aug. 19.
“A credential to get into the Chicago Democratic National Convention is a hotter ticket than a Taylor Swift concert,” Korge said. “We have to tell people there’s a limit to how many people we can get into the convention.”
Demand around the convention mirrors the ebullience the party is experiencing since President Joe Biden stepped aside from seeking the party’s nomination on July 21. Harris, who announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate Tuesday, is riding a wave of momentum. She has packed arenas the last few weeks — a new phenomenon for the campaign. Harris’ campaign reported raising an eye-popping $310 million last month, more than double what former President Donald Trump’s campaign had raised. In one week, 360,000 people signed up to volunteer for Harris.
It’s all a marked shift from the days and weeks after Biden’s devastating debate with Trump in late June. As fundraising for Biden began to falter across the board, there was talk about canceling events around the convention, said Jaimey Sexton, a Chicago-based consultant with the Sexton Group who has booked or helped arrange multiple events around the convention.
Now, he said, he’s hard-pressed to help find a proper dinner spot for a group of 20 people.
“Before it was going to be a wake; now it’s going to be Mardi Gras,” Sexton said. “Normally, this stuff would have been coming together six weeks ago. But everyone was paralyzed; no one had money to do anything.”
After Harris stepped into Biden’s role at the top of the Democratic ticket, demand accelerated, he said.
“Now it’s just a scramble,” he said, to accommodate all the new requests.
A person close to convention planning said that to some degree, it’s typical for people to come out of the woodwork two weeks before a convention trying to get tickets. And after Covid sidetracked live events in 2020, there was steady enthusiasm to hold the first real Democratic convention since 2016. The Chicago Host Committee closed its call for convention volunteers at the end of July after it received applications or interest forms from 30,000 people. It surpassed its goal of 12,000 in mid-July, before the change of nominee, a spokesperson said.
Still, consultants, event planners, activists and delegates say they’re experiencing a spike in interest since Harris took the reins. The host for one event specifically asked that it not be publicized for fear it would swell beyond capacity.
Talk of bartering tickets for event entry is already underway, said Greg Goldner, founder and managing partner of Resolute Public Affairs.
Goldner said some of his corporate clients are sending more people for longer stays than anticipated, candidates competing in November who had planned to attend only a couple of days are extending their trips, and new entertainment and events are popping up.
Finding a hotel room is still possible — Chicago can accommodate conventions of 100,000 people, and the convention is estimated to bring in 50,000 — but prices aren’t cheap, he said.
“The informal economy around access and who can trade what is going to be at its finest,” Goldner said. “The centralized calendar is now a massive spreadsheet that is increasing every single day. … You’re starting to see a lot of new events that are going to be fun.”
Illinois State Comptroller Susana Mendoza, who is also a delegate, is among those who has been bombarded with requests for help landing convention credentials.
“Enthusiasm is off the charts right now. We really feel massive momentum going into this convention,” Mendoza said. “My phone has literally been ringing in an insane way, with people asking me if I have extra tickets to the convention. They are so hard to come by, which is clearly a sign of the excitement.”
Kim Walz, a longtime Democratic activist in Chicago and onetime aldermanic candidate, said the last few weeks have been transformative for her and others in the party.
“There has been so much divisiveness that I wanted just to tune it all out — and I’m a pretty engaged person. And I think a lot of people felt that way. Ignore the noise and maybe it will go away — but it didn’t, and it just got louder and angrier,” said Walz (who has no known relation to Tim Walz). “That has changed for me. I have a new hope for the direction of our country and for the world my daughter will grow up in.”
“I’m fired up,” she said. “The energy around this ticket is palpable.”
