Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Getting DNC cost $300,000-plus

Convention officials are tight-lipped about how much money they’ve raised, or spent, since landing the event. But they raised a lot to get it.

Tax forms show the host committee raised $311,753 in pursuit of the convention. The 990 forms don’t say where the money came from. So it’s unclear how much came from Duke Energy, whose chairman, Jim Rogers, co-chaired the effort.

“We certainly participated in the effort,” said spokesman Tom Williams, who declined to say how much the company provided.

Rogers has said, “The fact that we demonstrated we can raise money was one of the edges we had” in getting the convention.

The report also shows the host committee spent $293,000.

The biggest beneficiary? The Charlotte public relations firm Luquire, George Andrews, which got $132,500.

Consultant Tom McMahon’s Washington firm was paid nearly $66,000. He was the former executive director of the Democratic National Committee.

Jim Morrill

2 comments:

Wade said...

I don't care how much money was raised, in the end the convention will cost the city money. Any event that requires tight security or massive infrastructure investments (such as the Olympics) is expensive. I would be against this even if it was the RNC. The only good that can come out of the DNC is people will stop saying "Charlotte, North Carolina" and just say Charlotte, like they do for New York, Atlanta, Seattle, and so on. To me, publicity is not worth the costs of the DNC or RNC or Olympics or anything like that.

Anonymous said...

Just so long as it just costs the city of Charlotte money, and not the rest of the North Carolina taxpayers, I'm happy.