St. Louis's bid to host the 2012 Democratic convention has powerful allies. | Photos by Reuters and AP Dem choice: St. Louis or Charlotte

With the site of the 2012 Democratic convention expected to be decided in a matter of weeks, insiders in the selection process believe it has come down to a choice between St. Louis and Charlotte, N.C., with the other two finalist cities, Minneapolis and Cleveland, all but out of the running.

All four have pluses and minuses when it comes to the logistical and political considerations that factor into the pick for a convention locale. But the party seems to be leaning against Minneapolis largely because Republicans held their 2008 convention in St. Paul. And while Ohio has battleground state allure, Cleveland's convention facilities are seen as subpar; the Nov. 2 defeat of Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland further hurt the city's chances.


Charlotte's backers tout the city as a bold statement about Democrats staking a claim to the New South. The city's bid has something of an inside track, with former Democratic National Committee Executive Director Tom McMahon and former DNC Communications Director Karen Finney serving as consultants.

"We feel good about Charlotte's chances," Finney told POLITICO. "We're very pleased with the effort Charlotte put forward when the technical advisory team visited over the summer. From a logistical perspective, we believe Charlotte has the facilities to host a great convention and a track record of putting on great conventions."

Charlotte is the smallest of the four candidate cities, with a compact downtown that could make it easier for delegates to get around. But it could also get cramped, and it's the only city with no union hotels; labor has warned the DNC that they wouldn't be pleased with its selection. Backers believe the unions could be placated with a deal for union convention workers, as happened in Denver in 2008.

The politics of a Charlotte selection might also make sense.

"It would send a strong message for Democrats to hold a convention in the South," Finney said.

Obama won North Carolina in 2008, as did Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue. While most of the state's House Democrats held their seats in 2010, the party lost both houses of the state legislature, giving Republicans control for the first time since 1898.

Like Charlotte, the St. Louis bid is bolstered by a Democratic governor, Missouri's Jay Nixon, but not much else that looks promising for the party politically. Obama narrowly lost the historical bellwether state in 2008; Republican Roy Blunt easily won the state's 2010 Senate contest, and House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton was defeated for reelection.

Some Democrats wonder whether first-term Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, who's up for reelection in 2012, would be hurt politically by having the convention in her home state at a time when she's trying to establish herself with voters as a less partisan figure.

But St. Louis's convention bid has its own powerful allies. In addition to Missouri's congressional Democrats, including McCaskill, the Illinois delegation — including such trusted Obama allies as Sen. Dick Durbin and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley — backs St. Louis, which shares a metropolitan area with Downstate Illinois.

The hotel workers union UNITE HERE has given its blessing to St. Louis, which has hosted five national political conventions in the past, though the most recent was the one that renominated Democratic President Woodrow Wilson in 1916.

"We think that if the decision is made on the strength of the bid itself, we're in a very good position," said Mack Bradley, a member of the city's convention host committee and spokesman for the bid.

Bradley points out that one of the largest Obama rallies of the 2008 cycle was held under the iconic Gateway Arch in the final weeks before the election, with an estimated 100,000 people in attendance. "Clearly, we know how to draw a crowd," he said.

Whether or not Missouri is seen as a swing state in 2012, the road to the presidency will go through the Midwest, he said.

In the end, the final determination will be made by the White House. A DNC committee has made technical recommendations based on inspections of the four cities and the decision nominally belongs to DNC Chairman Tim Kaine, but he will naturally consult with the president and his top political brain trust -- David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Jim Messina -- as they settle on the backdrop for Obama's renomination.

Insiders believe the decision hasn't yet been made. While it could come as early as the last week of this year, January seems more likely. The announcement that the party would go to Denver in 2008 was made on Jan. 11, 2007.

Republicans announced Tampa, Fla., as their 2012 convention site back in May, an unusually early designation that they said would jumpstart fundraising. Each party will need to raise between $40 million and $50 million to fund its end-of-summer delegate confab.

Since then, the GOP convention has gotten caught in the crossfire over RNC Chairman Michael Steele, with accusations that Steele was wasting the committee's funds handing out convention-related jobs and contracts to friends. Through September, the Washington Post reported, convention spending topped $600,000, compared to less than $40,000 outlaid by the committee at this point prior to 2008.

Byron Shafer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin who has studied political conventions, said parties' location choices send a symbolic message.

"Do you go to your base or go to your periphery?" he said. A Republican convention in, say, Oklahoma would have painted a clear picture of a party in retrenching mode, while Florida is a paradigmatic swing state.

Assessing the four Democratic cities in purely political terms, Shafer said: "If you follow that logic, they go to Cleveland."