Owens, Hart expect smooth Dem convention

Key Colorado surrogates for Barack Obama and John McCain say the Democratic National Convention faces some obvious risks, but predict it will go off smoothly, in a PoliticsWest TV webcast airing today.

"I hope it's going to be good for Colorado," says Bill Owens, the former governor and now a national co-chair for McCain. "I think it will be good for Colorado."

 

Obama's supporter, former Sen. Gary Hart, opines: "It will bring not only economic benefits but the focus of not just the nation but world - 15,000 to 20,000 journalists coming here. What's on display here isn't just the Democratic Party. It's the city of Denver. It's the state of Colorado."

The experts predict that protests will be minimal, given Obama's anti-war position, and Owens says none of the seeds of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago exist in Denver.

From the webcast (in the final six minutes of the broadcast):

Hart: I think if newspapers and television stations want to focus on daisies and wind turbines that don't work and make that the story I suppose that will be a distraction. The broader issue is this is the first national convention to come to this city in a hundred years. It will bring not only economic benefits but the focus of not just the nation but world - 15,000 to 20,000 journalists coming here. What's on display here isn't just the Democratic Party. It's the city of Denver. It's the state of Colorado. It's also by the way, Colorado's media that will be scrutinized by the other media. And I think it's going to be a huge event. If people want to pick at the edges and find faults, they can do so. But that's going to miss the big story.

Owens: I think it's going - I hope it's going to be good for Colorado. I think it will be good for Colorado. ... I think it can be potentially very good for this state. If I were (Mayor) John Hickenlooper or (Gov.) Bill Ritter I would be a little nervous. Just because with the amount of international media here, if there is a glitch, it's magnified. I've told friends of mine, 'You're not going to see much of a difference unless you have to go downtown with the convention.' It's not going to cripple this city. It's not going to stop the city from moving on. Enough people are actually going to go out of town on their summer vacation planned for that week that traffic's probably going to be reduced in and out of Denver except around the convention site itself.

Owens: (On protest groups like Re-create 68) There just isn't that much anger at the Democratic Party from the left. Because in my view, the Democratic Party has nominated a candidate of the left. I couldn't imagine. This isn't a Mayor Daley and the Chicago police versus an anti-war, pro-war Humphrey, McGovern, McCarthy I should say. Gosh, I mean, the Democratic Party is pretty united right now.

Hart: I don't know who the protesters are frankly. I've heard a lot of media coverage about them but no one asking, 'What is it you're protesting?' All the coverage has been about, 'There are going to be protests. They're going to be disruptive.' I want to know who these people are. They're certainly not - I mean, if Barack Obama is anywhere near as far left as Bill says, they have nothing to protest.

Owens: You know, I was in New York for the Republican convention four years ago, and if ever there was a city that could have been stopped and crippled with the traffic of having a convention in Manhattan, and a president who was not popular in Manhattan or in New York, though he won the election, and yet it ran very easily. Denver's much different. My guess is this is going to be much ado about nothing.

Hart: I suppose if there are glitches here there will be glitches there. ... You can't just send 35,000 people on an intermediate-sized city like ours or like Minneapolis and not have somebody getting arrested or whatever. There will be glitches. ... I would encourage all who are in the media to look at the big picture, that's all.

- Chuck Plunkett, The Denver Post