IF BUCHANANITES THOUGHT they were the only ones being jilted by officials at the Republican National Convention, they now have dinner companions. Grousing over coveted space in the packed-to-the-rafters San Diego Convention Center has become something of a hobby horse for conservative advocacy groups these days. For months, futile attempts have been made to secure scarce exhibit space and/or “special” press passes (for non-traditional media). Movement stalwarts and Republican party fellow-travelers such as the Media Research Center, Accuracy in Media, the Family Research Council, and the Eagle Forum (to name a few) say this is the hardest it’s ever been to get access.
And now convention officials have made it even harder: by saying the groups won’t get any. After months of unanswered phone calls and logistical disarray, the convention’s assistant manager, Michael Hook, issued a form letter saying the convention will be “operating according to a policy which prohibits advocacy group displays in all areas controlled by the convention.” The policy, says Hook, is the same as in ’88 and ’92. “That’s bull,” says Don Irvine of Accuracy in Media, who said he manned two booths in Houston four years ago.
Unfavorable comparisons with Houston are a common refrain, because San Diego conventioneers are dealing with about one sixtieth the exhibit space. Complicating matters is the San Diego Host Committee’s abandonment of “The Presidential Experience” — a planned retail emporium outside the Convention Center that would have accommodated many of the disgruntled parties but fell through because of space limitations.
Bob Hood, a San Diego-based special events contractor, is the convention’s master vendor and licensee, commissioned by the convention to decide who actually gets vending space. He says the perceived slight was simply a spatial and financial consideration. It’s better, he says, to have actual retail vendors selling jewelry, children’s clothing, and campaign buttons (since the Host Committee gets a cut of their profits to help defray costs) than to have advocacy groups giving away freebies and staking out their issues in an effort to boost membership.
An additional benefit, Hood admits, is skirting the prickly business of the Republican convention looking like it’s endorsing one advocacy group over another. “It makes their job easier in some kind of who-gets-what,” Hood says, “because nobody gets any.”
And how. Most advocacy outfits are getting exactly zero special press passes (for their newsletters and other publications), which are mostly being distributed to college newspapers. This doesn’t mean, says convention spokeswoman Anne Gavin, that the short-shrifted should take it personally. Gavin had 600 requests for about 100 passes — in addition to the 12,000 working journalists. And anyway, she says, the passes wouldn’t get the groups all that far — just “a seat behind a column off to the side — they’re horrible.”
Adding insult to injury is the meticulous vetting of prospective merchandise, should an advocacy group sneak any merchandise onto an actual vendor’s table. Convention officials have to be concerned about any over-the- line offerings: the occasional expletive-laced bumper sticker, portraits of Hillary as dominatrix, the coaster with the sweaty and smitten Bill and Al coupled in unbuttoned cutoffs. But this year, it seems, sensibilities are a little extra-delicate. When a Media Research Center employee phoned Bob Hood to pitch a T-shirt with a picture of Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Bryant Gumbel under the header “Team Clinton,” she was told, “No, no, that’s too political. The convention doesn’t want anything that’s too political.”
“They want nonpartisans at a political convention,” says one frustrated observer. “That’s like saying we’re having the Super Bowl, but we don’t want any sports fans.”
Hood says the standards aren’t really that stringent. He was simply speculating that the T-shirt may be inappropriate according to the Republican National Convention’s informal guidelines as outlined to him by Michael Hook (who gets final say).
“If they have shirts that reflect negatively upon the Dan Rathers and Peter Jennings of the world, the convention may feel uncomfortable having that merchandise available for sale,” says Bob Hood. And besides, somebody has to draw the line. “There’s a lot of strange people out there who think what they do is interesting. I’ve seen some bumper stickers that were a chuckle, but they were inappropriate and offended various groups. I found it offensive, and I’m a pretty liberal guy.”
Are you sure that’s the word you want to use, Bob?
by Matt Labash
