Martin AustermuhleThe Republican Party certainly screwed D.C. in its official platform, but as our embedded correspondent and GOP delegate Patrick Mara wrote, at least the D.C. delegates to the convention got some choice seats on the floor of the arena in Tampa.
The Democratic Party may be kinder—albeit without mentioning statehood in its platform—but the seats are way worse for the D.C. delegation, wrote the Post yesterday:
Seating is everything in Washington, in politics, at conventions. So it is no accident that the delegation of the District of Columbia is in the nosebleed seats at the back of the arena here in Charlotte. That’s where the pariah mayors could pose for pictures without attracting much notice or enthusiasm: former Mayor Marion Barry and current embattled Mayor Vincent Gray. Both are delegates, Gray the chair of the 50-member group. Most attendees barely looked up when the District’s mayor slowly made his way up the stairs to the arenas last rows. At 6 p.m., as a rising-star mayor took the podium, Newark’s Cory Booker, Gray sat alone, unsmiling.
Looking a seating chart for the delegations (which is posted below), it’s true—D.C. got some of the worst seats in the house. We’re way in the back, occupying the last few rows behind Maryland and alongside some of the delegates from Arizona and Missouri. Looking at the chart, Guam got better seats than D.C. did, as did the “Democrats Abroad.”
It doesn’t stop there, writes the Washingtonian’s Harry Jaffe. Not only do D.C. Democrats have pretty awful seats, but they’re staying in a hotel some 20 miles from Charlotte.
Of course, this isn’t particularly surprising, and it doesn’t have anything to do with Barry or Gray. D.C.’s three electoral votes certainly aren’t in question, and our seats this year certainly aren’t any better—nor any worse—than in 2008. (That’s no consolation to Marion Barry, though, who has been tweeting up a storm in Charlotte.) President Obama doesn’t risk anything by putting D.C. in the nosebleeds; Virginia delegates, on the other hand, have prime seats on the arena floor.
Maybe D.C.’s delegates need to look at the silver-lining: when the convention is over, they’ll be first out the door and first to their cars, avoiding the post-event traffic that will befall those suckers with the good seats.
