Ken Jones, CEO and executive director of the Tampa Host Committee for the Republican National Convention, is usually a pleasant, mild-mannered guy. But suggest to him that Tampa’s selection as the site of RNC 2012 was a done deal in advance, and he gets a little touchy.
“I don’t think anybody thought at the time that it was ours to lose,” the 40-year-old private equity exec told CL recently. In his RNC role, Jones has spent more time than anybody over the past two years readying Tampa for its greatest moment in the national spotlight.
The Cigar City had been in the hunt to host the 2004 and 2008 RNCs, but lost out both times, with the loss to Minneapolis-St. Paul in 2006 being especially painful.
As Tampa fielded a bid one more time in 2010, its only competitors were Salt Lake City and Phoenix, western cities that, like Tampa, had never hosted a political convention. The inside bet was that, because it was located in an important swing state and had been passed over twice in the past decade, this had to be Tampa’s year.
But Jones isn’t buying that.
“Nobody said, ‘Oh well, come on. They’re not going to give it to Phoenix or Utah,’” he told CL in a recent conversation. “Maybe there were some people who thought that, but I certainly never felt that way. I always felt that you have to put in 110 percent, and you better put your best foot forward, you better knock the cover off the ball, because if you don’t, somebody else is nipping at your heels. We gave it our all, all the way through.”
At the forefront in all three bids was 83-year-old Al Austin, the Tampa real estate developer whose official title for the convention is committee fundraising chair. He and Jones have had the challenge of raising some $55 million in private funds to stage the four-day event.
It hasn’t been easy.
“We started early, and people weren’t motivated, and people weren’t interested,” he said. Donors who might have been willing to give money to a political campaign couldn’t get too excited about an event two years in the future.
Ken Jones has been steadfast in his refusal to disclose to the media how fundraising is going, other than to say that the committee is on pace to have the funds available when the convention begins.
Organizing the event hasn’t been a completely smooth ride, either. Tampa won the bid while Michael Steele was running the Republican National Committee. That’s the same Michael Steele now seen doing prolific pundit duty on MSNBC.
Steele was the party chair when Tampa was awarded the convention, but he lost his bid for a second two-year term to Reince Priebus in January of 2011, shortly after charges of lackluster fundraising and financial mismanagement surfaced, directly related to the Tampa convention. When Priebus took over, he fired everyone considered allies of Steele on the Committee on Arrangements, a division of the Republican National Committee charged with putting together the convention.
Since the beginning of this year, the Tampa Bay business establishment and Mayor Bob Buckhorn, along with Jones and the host committee, have sold the RNC as not just an economic boon, but also as something transcendent, a week-long commercial that will sell the Tampa Bay area to the business world in a way it’s never been put on display.
“I think when we look back 10 years, 20 years from now, they will say this is where Tampa turned the corner, we had our introduction to the world stage and we danced like we never danced before,” Buckhorn said recently at a business forum. “The long-term impact will not be just the $150 million in economic impact that will occur this week, it will be the residual effect of this community living up to its expectations and its potential.”
Al Austin extols the virtues of Florida as they will appear to hypothetical CEOs. “They know about Orlando and Miami,” he says, “but they don’t bother coming here, they don’t have a reason to.”
To that end the Tampa Bay Host Committee is teaming up with Bloomberg LP to host a series of panel discussions with leading CEOs throughout convention week that are designed to show off the area. Ken Jones says, “We want people to understand why Florida is such a great place to do business.” The Chamber of Commerce bullet points come rolling out: “Low cost of living, no state income tax, good weather, great beaches…”
The Tampa Bay Partnership is helping to produce a four-hour daily webcast called Front Row Tampa Bay. Earlier this summer members of the media and business officials/ potential investors gathered for an early-morning mock taping of a broadcast at Stageworks Theatre in Channelside. Progress Energy’s Vinny Dolan told the assembled crowd, “We have a unique opportunity coming this August to promote the prosperity of the region and do the things that are necessary for economic development.” That effort is expected to cost $600,000. In a similar vein, the Host Committee is sponsoring a summit for CEOs called “Why Florida, Why Now.”
But all of this presupposes that America’s CEOs somehow know nothing about the Tampa Bay area — the 15th biggest media market in the country.
There’s certainly room to grow. The host region for the 2008 RNC, Minneapolis-St. Paul, had some 23 Fortune 500 companies in its region. The Tampa Bay area has but four (Publix, WellCare Health Care, Jabil and Tech Data in Clearwater).
But will selling the beaches, the quality of life, and yes, the airport and seaport be elixirs to the American businessman? Will their charms offset the lack of transportation, or a higher education system which landed only one university (Florida) in Forbes magazine’s recent list of the top 100 colleges in the country?
West Tampa businessman and activist Jason Busto says, “The convention isn’t going to change the fundamental issues that keep us from being the best place we can be.” Busto supports the effort to bring the convention to Tampa (and his plumbing company has been hired to do work at the convention center), but says ultimately that the pitch for out-of-state CEOs reflects local leaders’ insecurity.
“They’re focusing on the wrong things. Instead of focusing on being on the map, and on being concerned about whether a CEO is going to kiss our ear, they need to worry about what’s not working here. Because that’s what’s driving the decision-making of any rational business owner. Not pie-in-the-sky, ‘Oh, what a great four days I had in Tampa. Let’s move there.’”
Former Mayor Sandy Freedman says maybe 25 years ago major CEOs didn’t know about Tampa, but not any longer.
“We’ve had four Super Bowls, we’ve had conventions of different types, there’s the beaches, there’s Orlando, so I don’t think we’re unknown anymore.”
Undoubtedly Tampa has already reaped some rewards by hosting the convention.
At a recent discussion about the RNC hosted by the Tampa Bay Business Journal, Rich Guidotti, vice president and general manager of AT&T, said his company will have spent over $20 million preparing for the convention, specifically putting 4G LTE within Tampa and the surrounding area. He also said they’ve installed three brand new cell sites covering 1,500 square miles, as well as 11 in-building systems for over $1 million apiece into hotels, the Times Forum and the convention center.
Tampa does have a flourishing cluster of top-flight health care facilities. Governor Scott reportedly intends to take a few of those CEOs on a tour of downtown Tampa’s most recent addition to that cluster, USF’s Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS).
In any event, Mayor Buckhorn and the local business community are correct when they say this is Tampa’s time to shine. Then again, it’s also late August, when Tampa’s attractions include heat, humidity and rainstorms — what Jeff Klinkenberg of the Tampa Bay Times calls “the primitive real Florida.”
Whatever the weather, we’ll soon learn first-hand the real benefits — and risks — of a national convention.
Mitch Perry is the News & Politics Editor of Creative Loafing Tampa.
This article appears in Aug 23-29, 2012.