Next time, Anaheim.
That’s the theme the Southern California city hopes to plant in the minds of Democratic National Committee members when they sit down to a breakfast with an Anaheim theme the morning after the presidential nomination.
The city is sponsoring the Friday breakfast to try to leap to the top of the list of potential 2008 presidential convention cities.
Along with a continental breakfast, it will provide DNC members with goody bags of trinkets provided by the Walt Disney Co.-owned Mighty Ducks hockey team and other local businesses. The city believes Arrowhead Pond, the arena where the Ducks play, would make a first-rate convention site.
“We will be the first city out of the box,” said Maggie Linden, a spokeswoman for the city’s effort.
Anaheim, home to Disneyland, plans a similar pitch at the Republican National Convention this summer in New York. It is starting a host committee to raise money from businesses and others for that bid.
The city sees no problem promoting itself to both parties. Linden noted that ethnically diverse Orange County, formerly a Republican stronghold, now has a sizable Democratic-leaning population.
The county went for President Bush in 2000 but also elected two Democrats to Congress, sisters Loretta and Linda Sanchez.
That gives the city another selling point, Linden said: “We are the rainbow that is California and that is the Democratic Party.”
