Go to the mobile version of this Web site.

Login | Contact Us | Site Map | Paid archives | Electronic edition | Subscription Questions | Extras

Home › News › Local News

Denver bolsters convention bid

Alan Gathright, Rocky Mountain News

Published July 28, 2006 at midnight

Text size  

More Local News

More stories »

An influential political pro hired to bring Denver the 2008 Democratic National Convention said Thursday that the city would be a powerful "launching pad" for the party's next presidential nominee.

Debbie Willhite, a key Democratic Party political strategist and national convention organizer for Bill Clinton's presidential campaigns, has been named executive director of the Denver 2008 Host Committee, showing the city's determination to win the 2008 convention.

She said a Denver convention would help the Democratic Party advance its successful strategy of attracting independent voters in the Mountain West to win back the White House.

"I think the No. 1 purpose of the convention is to be a launching pad for the presidential nominee," Willhite said. "Denver serves that purpose in a number of ways. The most important way is that it stretches the electoral map and shows that the Democrats are reaching out to the Rocky Mountain West."

She said that gives Denver an edge over the other two competitors for the Democratic convention - New York and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Willhite was the Democratic National Committee's national field coordinator in 1992 and 1996, playing a key role in Clinton's victorious presidential campaigns. She was deputy director of the 1992 Democratic convention in New York and has worked on each of the party's presidential conventions since 1980.

She was also executive director for the Denver Summit of the Eight, a meeting of the world's most powerful industrialized nations, in 1997.

Willhite's hiring was just one in several changes Thursday for the host committee that's been run by a volunteer group of business and elected leaders since Denver went after the convention in February.

City Councilwoman Elbra Wedgeworth was named the committee's volunteer president. Paul Lhevine, who managed Mayor John Hickenlooper's 2003 election victory, was named director of operations.