WASHINGTON – Downtown hotels will be hard to come by when the Republican National Convention kicks off in Milwaukee in just over two months.
But Wisconsin’s convention delegation have secured their rooms.
The state’s delegation will stay at the Hampton Inn & Suites just half a mile from Fiserv Forum, the epicenter of the July 15-18 convention, after originally being slated to stay at a hotel in Racine, a Republican Party of Wisconsin spokesman told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this week.
Exactly why the delegation was moved from Racine to the downtown Milwaukee hotel was not immediately clear, though one GOP official told the Journal Sentinel Tuesday the change was made during a back and forth between the Wisconsin delegation and the RNC.
But the downtown hotel has faced financial trouble in recent years. The Hampton Inn & Suites closed temporarily last May but reopened under new owners — the fourth operators in just over four years.
The Hampton Inn & Suites is just one of many around Milwaukee and southeastern Wisconsin the convention will put to use. Organizers have contracted with 111 hotels in Wisconsin for the RNC, officials told the Journal Sentinel.
Organizers try to keep the members of each state delegation together in a hotel or in neighboring hotels for reasons including the ease of transportation and camaraderie, but figuring out who goes where can be complicated. Some of it has to do with politics.
“Who are good supporters? Who is doing good work in their states? Who are the good actors? Who is working hard? Who is meeting certain deliverables and benchmarks in their states?” Elise Dickens, the chief executive officer for the Republican National Committee, said in March.
Other hotel assignments have not been publicly released.
Alison Dirr of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin RNC delegation lands downtown Milwaukee hotel assignment
