5 Reasons Democrats Picked Chicago for Their 2024 Convention

President Biden’s decision to host the Democratic National Convention in Chicago represents the triumph of practicality over sentimentality.

He picked a major Midwestern city with ample labor-friendly hotels, good transportation and a billionaire governor happy to underwrite the event. That combination overpowered the pull Biden felt from runner-up Atlanta, the capital of a state Mr. Biden won for Democrats in 2020 for the first time in a generation.

Chicago — unlike the last four Democratic convention cities — is not in a presidential battleground. But it is the cultural and economic capital of the American Midwest. The United Center, the convention arena, sits about an hour away from two critical presidential battleground states, Wisconsin and Michigan, with sometimes-competitive Minnesota nearby.

Democrats used the choice to highlight their commitment to protecting the “blue wall” of Midwestern states that have been critical to their White House victories. But the electoral map wasn’t the only factor. Here are the top reasons Chicago was selected.

Labor

Mr. Biden said during his first year in office that he would be “the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history.”

So it would have been politically tricky at best for him to send a national political convention to Atlanta, a city with comparatively few unionized hotels in a so-called right-to-work state.

An Atlanta convention could have prompted organized labor to limit its financial contributions, or even orchestrate outright boycotts. When President Barack Obama took the Democratic convention to Charlotte in 2012, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers skipped the event.

“Some of our labor members have felt that they’ve been left behind,” said Lonnie Stephenson, who retired as president of the I.B.E.W. last year. “I think this shows the commitment of the Democratic Party to support that part of the country.”

Money and J.B. Pritzker

Conventions are expensive and the money to pay for them can be hard to come by. The nominee does not want to divert dollars for campaigning in battleground states to an elaborate party. And the Democratic base is increasingly hostile to many of the large corporations that have historically underwritten conventions.

Enter J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, a billionaire who also happens to have been a former top party fund-raiser.

Mr. Pritzker was central to Chicago’s bid. He personally lobbied Mr. Biden. And before the announcement Tuesday, he privately pledged fund-raising for the convention, which is a relief to party officials.

“We have a very generous local bunch of corporate leaders and corporations in the Fortune 500,” Mr. Pritzker said in an interview on Tuesday. “I’m, of course, personally committed to engage in the fund-raising that’s necessary.”

Implicit in that promise is that Mr. Pritzker, who spent more than $300 million on his two campaigns for governor, will serve as a financial backstop if outside money does not materialize.

Political geography

Democrats were quick to talk about other factors. They held up the selection of Chicago as a symbol of the party’s investment in the Midwest, and the central role the region will play in Mr. Biden’s path to victory in 2024.

“The Midwest reflects America,” said Jaime Harrison, the party chairman.

Republicans had the same idea. They announced last August that their convention would be in Milwaukee in July 2024, meaning that the two conventions will be within driving distance. (The Democrats will meet in August.)

But the reality is that the political implications for the host city and state are often overblown.

Democrats hosted in North Carolina (2012) and Pennsylvania (2016), and still lost those states. Republicans hosted in Minnesota (2008) and Florida (2012), and lost both times. And in 2016, Republicans hosted Donald J. Trump’s nominating convention in Cleveland but the event divided the party’s Ohio leadership. The Republican governor, John Kasich, and its senator, Rob Portman, largely stayed away, then Republicans went on to win the state anyway.

Still, the decision stung in Georgia, where Democrats had made a strong political case for hosting.

Mayor Andre Dickens of Atlanta called Georgia “the battleground that will decide the 2024 election.”

And Erick Allen, a former state representative who is the party chairman in suburban Cobb County, said Democrats were making a mistake.

“I think they got it wrong,” he said. “There’s an opportunity to use the convention in Atlanta as a regional win for the Democratic Party. And I think that’s now going to be harder.”

Logistics, logistics, logistics

Conventions are international events that require tens of thousands of hotel rooms and a transportation and law enforcement network that can involve dozens of local, state and federal agencies.

Chicago here had an advantage in the number of hotel rooms, 44,000, within a reasonable distance of the convention site, along with a public transit network that has three train lines that have stops within a few blocks of the arena.

“The bottom line is Chicago can hold a convention of this size in a very centrally located, easy to get around way,” said Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat.

More compelling to the Democratic National Committee was the fact that Chicago’s United Center sits on a plot of 45 acres of privately owned land, making it easier to secure and control activities outside. The arena also has twice as many suites as Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, which would have hosted the convention there. Those suites will serve as magnets for the party’s high-dollar donors.

Crime and local politics

It’s pretty clear how Republicans will portray Mr. Biden’s convention city.

A spokesman for the campaign arm of House Republicans, Will Reinert, mocked the selection: “What’s the bigger concern: sirens drowning out nominating speeches or what items attendees must leave at home to make room for their bulletproof vest in their suitcase?”

(Republicans notably did not mention crime rates when they selected Milwaukee, which had a higher homicide rate than Chicago in 2022.)

Democrats answered that pandemic-era spikes in crime were easing, in Chicago and across the country. As a political issue, the tough-on-crime messaging may also be losing its power. The city this month elected a new mayor, Brandon Johnson, who defeated a more conservative rival backed by the local police unions who focused his campaign on the issue of addressing the city’s crime.

“The truth is that things have gotten better and better,” Mr. Pritzker said. “It’s a recovery across the nation in major cities that includes a recovery on the issue of crime. Things are better than they were.”

Maya King contributed reporting.