For the past 19 months, the Denver committee hosting the Democratic National Convention has been preparing for this immense spectacle that swirled in like a mix of occupying army, official Washington, Hollywood gala and grassroots activism.
As the Democratic National Convention came to its rock-concert end Thursday, members of the host committee felt as if they’d pulled it off.
“It basically happened the way we always said it would,” said host committee president Elbra Wedgeworth.
After 19 months of preparing to host the convention, the members of the committee were the toasts of countless parties, the subject of untold numbers of interviews and the recipients of beautiful weather and a week gone smoothly.
The protesters came, but as a fraction of the number they had promised. There were traffic snarls, but not on the scale many feared. More than 100 protesters were arrested, but there was no major property damage or rioting.
And in the end, the city shone.
“I think Denver’s looking pretty good,” said Robert Eisinger, a political scientist in Portland, Ore., closely watching coverage of the convention.
“Denver is being portrayed well, and when they show the football field and Pepsi Center, they show the expanse around it; those images are attractive and appealing,” Eisinger said. “I don’t know that that translates into votes, but it probably does help Denver and Colorado in the long run.”
Mayor John Hickenlooper, a politician put in a make-or-break position by how the week unfurled, was ecstatic Thursday.
“The city is so clean and so beautiful, and everyone comments on how friendly our taxi drivers are, the concierges, the police officers, the people in the restaurants,” Hickenlooper said, as he waited to file into Invesco Field at Mile High.
The mayor said several of the civic festivals and panels set up during the convention had been well received. Of particular excitement to the mayor was the Rocky Mountain Roundtable, an idea he had to bring experts from industry, commerce and politics together to hash out a wide range of contemporary issues, such as energy and the environment.
All 16,000 tickets to the conference sold out.
“We’ve all been so busy and so focused, it’s been very exciting for us,” Hickenlooper said.
As part of the host committee’s victory lap, Wedgeworth addressed the crowd late in the afternoon.
“We call this the ‘New West,’ ” Wedgeworth said before crowds at Invesco Field at Mile High. “We bring new energy and new excitement. . . . In November, it’s that new energy of the New West we need to send Barack Obama to the White House.”
Wedgeworth welcomed the delegates and visitors and talked about Denver’s open-mindedness.
“Denver believes in diversity,” Wedgeworth said, after describing her life growing up African- American in a poor neighborhood under parents whose hardworking values she praised for raising her to become a city councilwoman.
Beyond presenting the city’s amenities, Wedgeworth focused on its diversity. She lauded Westerners for embracing Federico Peña, the first Latino mayor of Denver, and Wellington Webb, the city’s first African-American mayor.
