Baking for the Republican Convention

I usually don't like to talk politics on this Blog site.

The older I get, the more I am convinced that people are incapable of governing one another.

Throughout my life, I have voted Republican across the board.

That might not be of interest to those of you who live in "RED" states, but Minnesota has been a "BLUE" state during Presidential elections longer than any state in the union.

They do like their donkeys here.

After voting for "W" and watching how his administration ran my country, I did get upset, but you know who pissed me off worse that him and his peeps?

My G.O.P. friends who decided to back the Right Wing regardless.

Sometimes a guy had to admit that he shoved his ballot in the wrong box.

In 2010 I officially resigned from the G.O.P.

I have not pledged my vote or allegience to any other party or candidate, but if I were to vote today, I would support my current President.

I don't agree with some of his takes, but c'mon.....dude inherited a time bomb, and I actually am impressed how he has kept composure while untangling the threads.

During the last Presidential elections in 2008, The Twin Cities was awarded the honor of hosting the Republican Convention.....

This was really the definition of ironic, because Minnesota (and even more so, Twin Citian's) HATE Republicans.

But when there is a dollar to be made........

So months - month's before this took place I recieved a call from the X-Cel Center which was going to house this gig, and they had me and all their vendors show up to a pow-wow.

When we got there, we were surrounded by suits-suits and more suits.

These guys took turns at the podium issuing us promises of oppurtunity that seemed staggering.

Klecko has been to the rodeo before, but this was the Republican Convention.

I've seen it on TV, I know how stuff like this works, the preverbial "Cash Cow" was preparing to dump his keester on our cash registers......or so we thought.

After charging restaurants and bars (What was it?) $300 each to get the liquor lisences sanctioned to extend closing hours from 1 a.m. to 3 a.m., and nudging every concept within bombing distance to amp up their service help by 25%......

You can imagine how excited everybody in the service/vending community became.

Oh yeah, then there was the plea for all of us who serviced the host venue to pitch in and donate what turned out to be hundreds of dollars each with items that would be given to the less fortunate.

Basically it was a clever way to kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

When Europe conducts the E8 sessions it is customary for the host city to round up the homeless, bums and indignent population, put them on trucks and dump them 200 miles out of the city.

How they get back is their own buisness, but it often times takes longer than a week.

In Saint Paul, we paid for their haircuts, bought them clothes, sent them to dentists and doctors.....

It was obvious that my cities leaders were merely trying to remedy broken bones with Band Aids.

I was thrilled with the prospects however...I landed the Fox News account and got to hang in the V.I.P. tent each day with their beautiful anchor peeps.

But other than that........not only did I not make a fortune......but on the week of the convention, it was the L-O-W-E-S-T grossing week in close to a decade.

3 a.m. bar closings?

Hah, 95% of the bars were vacant by 9 p.m.

You see, all the locals were led to believe that the town would be flowing over the brim, so they just decided to hibernate until our city was returned to us .

And what the "City Fathers" did not tell us was that they were going to shut all passages south of the arena.

West 7th, which is the main artery in that area, and houses 95% of the downtown Saint Paul bars and restaurants were seperated from the X-Cel Center by a huge chain link fence.

It was like the Berlin Wall.

When the politicians and dignitaries came to do their convention stuff, a bus with security clearance would usher them in, and they would enter the north end of the building.

What was supposed to become a financial windfall became a curse of epidemic proportions.

Like I said, I'm not that big into politics these days, and I have no idea who is hosting what, but if you have friends working in the cities that have receaved the Convention bid(s)for this upcoming election....do them a favor and pass this post on.

It may save them some heartache, and cash.

BTW....in closing, I should mention that the year I did the G.O.P.,Denver won the D.F.L. nod, when the whole Hoot En Nanny what finished, I shouted out to the Rocky Mountain state, and my peeps out their told me that they had taken the same fleecing.

Polititions.....they might even be worse than lawyers huh?