The protracted Democratic contest to nominate a presidential candidate has stymied efforts by the Denver committee responsible for raising the $55 million to host the party’s 2008 national convention, and the committee probably will miss a significant fundraising deadline Monday, sources say.
As of Friday afternoon, Denver’s host committee was as much as $3 million short of its end-of-the-day deadline Monday to have $28 million in cash in the bank for use by the Democratic National Convention Committee.
But sources say the committee has firm commitments for payments that exceed $28 million.
“Raising money for something of this magnitude is backbreaking,” Mayor John Hickenlooper said earlier this month. “The uncertainty of the (nominee) has been somewhat problematic.”
The mayor, who has worked more than a year on the fundraising effort, said some corporations that are asked to contribute want to know which candidate their money ultimately is supporting.
In Boston, which hosted the Democrats in 2004, the host committee’s fundraising escalated by several million dollars once Sen. John Kerry became the presumptive nominee, officials there say, in part because Kerry’s campaign joined the effort.
The campaigns of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, meanwhile, are sucking all the oxygen from the room — setting fundraising records almost monthly.
Denver’s committee missed its first milestone in June by $1.5 million but hit its last deadline in December with $15 million banked. Ultimately, it must raise more than $40 million in cash and $15 million in donated goods and services for the convention, which runs Aug. 25-28.
Host cities traditionally struggle to raise the money until late in the process.
The host committee in St. Paul, Minn., which is obligated to raise $39 million in cash for the Republican National Convention, met its Dec. 15 deadline of 60 percent and is on pace to meet its June deadline of 80 percent, spokeswoman Teresa McFarland said Friday. McFarland had no comment on whether the fact that Sen. John McCain has emerged as the GOP’s presumptive nominee has helped efforts.
Chuck Plunkett: 303-954-1333 or cplunkett@denverpost.com
