Atlanta mayor says DNC snub sends a message to Black voters in fiery letter. Some party insiders disagree
TheGrio...
Andre Dickens accused Democrats of abandoning the South and Black voters, while party veterans say logistics and other considerations complicate that argument.
Mayor Andre Dickens blasted the Democratic National Committee after the national organization for the Democratic Party declined to select Atlanta as a finalist to be the host city for the 2028 DNC convention.
“For the DNC to not even include Atlanta in the shortlist means that the DNC does not consider Atlanta or Georgia relevant to the past, present, or future of the Democratic Party,” Dickens wrote in a public letter rebuking DNC Chairman Ken Martin.
Acknowledging Atlanta as the “crown jewel of the Southeast,” the “Black economic engine of the country” and “cradle of the civil rights movement,” Mayor Dickens accused national Democrats of “abandoning the South, and once again abandoning Black voters.”
“At a time when Trump and the Supreme Court are minimizing Black electoral power we need a party that would come to Atlanta and galvanize the Southeast for 2028 and beyond,” said Dickens. “With so much evidence to the contrary, this was an opportunity for Ken Martin and the DNC leadership to show they have a thoughtful plan for the party and know how to win the White House in 2028. But instead they are running scared and retreat to their safe spaces.”
The DNC convention has not been hosted in Atlanta since 1988, when Democratic voters nominated Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis for U.S. president and Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen for U.S. vice president. The last DNC convention, where then U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris was coronated as the 2024 Democratic nominee, was held in Chicago.
Democratic experts who spoke with theGrio say while they can respect Mayor Dickens’ passionate advocacy for Atlanta, his fiery condemnation of Martin and the DNC leaves out key factors considered by DNC officials when selecting a convention’s host city.
“You have to give the mayor credit for being Atlanta first always, and for not rolling over and just accepting this. I appreciate that he is fighting for his city,” says Hyma Moore, a former DNC official who served as director in the office of former DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison. He added, “He’s looking for any opportunity to showcase the city of Atlanta. It’s a wonderful city [and] he’s doing his job.”
However, Moore, who worked on the DNC committee that selected Chicago as the host city for the 2024 convention, said the premise of Mayor Dickens’ argument for Atlanta was “unfair” and “unfounded.”
“The convention process is a very technical process. The first thing you think about when you go into a city is not just about how this is going to reflect on the Democratic brand or how this is going to reflect on electoral politics in that particular region,” Moore explained. “It has to work logistically, and as much as Mayor Dickens has done to make Atlanta an even more world-class city, he can’t to make the arena the right size for it to work for the convention.”
He continued, “There are maybe like six or seven new hotels in downtown Atlanta, [but] the vast amount of delegates would still have to travel from outside of Atlanta to get to convention in the Atlanta traffic in the summer, and it’s just not the best case scenario when you’re trying to give your delegates and your convention goers an experience that doesn’t include an hour worth of travel both ways.”
Jamarr Brown, a Democratic strategist, told theGrio, “I can certainly understand Mayor Dickens’ sentiments. I do believe that in many ways they are fair.”
However, having personally worked on a failed bid to host the DNC convention in Houston as the former executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, Brown says many factors, such as whether hotels are unionized, play a role in a city’s selection.
“There are also political considerations,” he said. “Are there candidates that are from that area? Is there a concentration of coalition of voters, not just Black voters,” he added.
Brown said he agreed with Dickens that the Democratic Party must “always uphold Black voters because Black voters have been the most consistent constituency of the party.”
However, he, like Moore, pointed out that Philadelphia, which also has a high concentration of Black voters, remains a finalist for the 2028 convention. The other two finalist cities are Boston and Denver.
Moore also defended Martin against some of Dickens’ critiques as it related to Black voters, pointing out that the DNC recently voted to keep South Carolina as the first primary state for the 2028 presidential election cycle— a decision that explicitly prioritized Black voters as a valued voting bloc for the party.
“Ken Martin went to bat for South Carolina to remain first,” he told theGrio. “There’s nothing that gives Black voters more of a sense of ownership in the Democratic Party than starting in South Carolina, which is one of the Blackest states in this union, and giving that state the first scratch at who’s going to go on to be the Democratic nominee.”
Moore also pushed back against the suggestion that where a convention is hosted has any meaningful impact on the electoral politics of that state.
“Hillary Clinton lost Pennsylvania in 2016. Kamala Harris didn’t do any better in Illinois than Joe Biden did in 2024,” he explained.
Ultimately, he said it’s easy to kick Martin while he’s down, as the DNC chair has faced vast criticisms for his leadership, from fundraising to whether the party is doing enough to invest in Black voters.
“Granted, I think Ken knew what he was getting into, so I don’t have sympathy for him, and I think he understands the moment. But it is difficult,” said Moore.
Brown said there needs to be a “broader conversation” about Black voters beyond the DNC convention.
He told theGrio, “I actually think it needs to be connected to the DNC’s yearly and consistent investment, because we shouldn’t wait until a 2028 convention as a sign to invest in Black voters.”