Political conventions are a lot of things—a party, an infomercial, the culmination of a months-long slog towards figuring out who might lead our country into the unknown future. Conventions are also a serious expense, with both the parties and the cities that host them spending some serious cash to get the events off the ground.
From the balloons that fall atop the victorious candidate to the police that patrol both inside and outside of the convention halls, here’s a look at just how much cold hard cash goes into creating our quadrennial celebrations of American factionalism.
2016 convention spending
$64 million: Fundraising goal for GOP
$60 million: Fundraising goal for Dems
The convention security complex
Cleveland and Philadelphia get $50 million each in federal grants for convention security. Here, some items on the 2016 convention shopping list of the Cleveland police force:
2,000 sets of full-body riot suits
300 patrol bikes
24 sets of ballistic body armor
3.7 miles of interlocking steel barriers
As the campaign season grows more divisive, some corporations are scaling back convention support
- ★ HP (HPE): Won’t attend either party convention. It was a major RNC donor four years ago.
- ★ Coca-Cola (KO): Will give $75,000 to both the Republican and Democratic conventions—considerably less than the $660,000 it gave to the Republican convention in 2012.
- ★ Amgen (AMGN): A 2012 donor, the biotech company won’t be giving cash to either convention this year, though it plans to host events at both.
- ★ Facebook (FB): Will provide financial support to both conventions, though exact figures aren’t known.
- ★ Apple (AAPL): The tech giant will not be supporting the RNC event, according to reports, but it hasn’t indicated yet if it plans to be present at the Democratic convention.
No more federal support
Federal funding for conventions was cut off in 2014, leaving parties to their own devices to fund the events.
The people who make the conventions run
REPUBLICANS
Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House and convention chair
Paul Manafort, Trump campaign convention manager
Reince Priebus, Chairman of the Republican National Committee
DEMOCRATS
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee
Rev. Leah Daughtry, Convention CEO
Barney Frank, Former congressman and co-chair of the rules committee
For more, read “What to Watch for at the Conventions.”
A version of this article appears in the July 1, 2016 issue of Coins2Day in the story “This Year, Conventions Matter Again,” as a sidebar.
