Nearly half of the delegations headed to the July 2020 Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee will be housed in Illinois, with some staying in hotels as far away as the Chicago suburbs.
Rosemont and Lake County in northern Illinois are assigned 26 of the 56 delegations scheduled to meet in Wisconsin. Rosemont is located near Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, one of the region's major transportation hubs. It will house 13 delegations, including the massive California, Florida, and Texas delegations.
A drive from Rosemont to Milwaukee's Fiserv Forum, where the main events of the convention will occur, takes about one hour and 20 minutes without traffic. The DNC stated that it is "working to support delegations that are farther away with scheduled transportation services to get them in the Convention for their caucus and before opening gavel," according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
None of the delegations were assigned to nearby Wisconsin cities Madison, Racine, Kenosha, or Sheboygan, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
The Democratic National Committee is assigning hotels for the convention during its 2019 summer meeting in San Francisco, which runs from Thursday through Saturday.
A list obtained by the Journal Sentinel on Thursday shows that the delegations' sleeping arrangements will be divided into seven groups, with some housed in downtown Milwaukee, some near the Milwaukee airport, and some in the Milwaukee suburbs. The rest have been assigned to counties in Illinois.
Lake County will host delegations from Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, New Mexico, North Carolina, Northern Marianas, Pennsylvania, and Utah.
In addition to California, Florida, and Texas, these delegations will stay in Rosemont: Alabama, American Samoa, Georgia, Guam, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Tennessee, Washington, and Wyoming.
The Milwaukee convention is the first time the Democrats will hold their convention in the Midwest since the party re-nominated former president Bill Clinton in Chicago in 1996. The move comes after 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was widely criticized for not visiting Wisconsin during her campaign, which Donald Trump narrowly took from Democratic dominance on Election Day.