Chris Quinn feared the worst: Protesters would clash violently with police, and visiting Republicans would get into it with the Democratic locals. Instead, the longtime editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer saw the opposite when his city hosted the 2016 Republican National Convention.
“It was just kind of a big, festive thing,” Quinn says. “People came here, they loved what they saw, and they didn’t have anything bad to say about Cleveland.”
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Cleveland has perhaps the best perspective to share with Milwaukee, as it hosted the only in-person RNC featuring Donald Trump as the presidential nominee. It’s also a Rust Belt city on a Great Lake with something to prove. “It’s always got a chip on its shoulder,” Quinn says of Cleveland. “You really wanted to make this work, and so a huge amount of work went into it.”
Expect Downtown Milwaukee to look like a fortress – Quinn describes high fencing, lots of security checkpoints, snipers stationed on the tops of buildings. But Quinn says all the cold, foreboding security apparatus yielded to more human interactions: police on bikes (led by the chief himself) riding up to a line of protesters and handing out water bottles, natives flocking from the suburbs to the city center to take in the atmosphere and people-watch.
“In the end, it was 95 or 96 percent joyous,” says Quinn.
He cautions that much depends on luck – they had great weather and a lack of big incidents, such as a shooting, that could define the week negatively – and wonders if such a kumbaya spirit can happen anymore in 2024’s political climate with Trump back on the ticket. “It’s a much more divided and bitter America than it was even eight years ago,” Quinn says.
