Democratic Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson called a press conference shortly after the Republican National Committee announced the city had made the first cut to host its convention, saying he鈥檇 gotten a very brief phone call with the news that Cleveland was among the six cities still under consideration.
鈥淭his second phase is one where they send in a technical team, I guess, to validate whether or not what we have asserted in our application is correct," Jackson said. "We make it through this round and we鈥檒l go through to the third round which is a full site visit.鈥�
City leaders said they were optimistic to have made it this far. That was the sentiment in Cincinnati as well, expressed by Democratic Mayor John Cranley.
鈥淲e are excited as all can be that we are a finalist for this convention, and we will do everything we can to convince the National Republican Party to pick Cincinnati," Cranley said.
But as officials in northeast and southwest Ohio celebrated, those in the central part of the state were downcast. Democratic Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman got the bad news in a phone call just after a press conference, and he said it appeared that issues with transportation may have hurt Columbus鈥� bid.
鈥淔olks coming to the city, getting right downtown or to Easton or the Ohio State University, need to have good public transportation," Coleman said. "So we got to look at COTA and we got to look at light rail to downtown.鈥�
Southwest Ohio is strongly Republican. While Cleveland is solidly Democratic, leaders don鈥檛 feel that will hurt their chances. It鈥檚 thought that Las Vegas is the frontrunner, though.
Whichever community is selected to host the convention will have to raise at least $50 million, but some studies have shown the return on that investment could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The RNC鈥檚 next announcement is expected in late May.
Democrats have approached all three cities about their 2016 convention, and Coleman says Columbus is making a strong push to campaign for that convention.
While Ohio has played a key role in the last several presidential contests, the state hasn鈥檛 hosted a major party convention since 1936.