DNC chooses Chicago for 2024 convention, passing on New York City

The Democratic National Committee said Tuesday that it has chosen Chicago as the site of its 2024 national convention, passing over New York, which had pushed hard to host the high-wattage election season gathering.

The Democratic National Convention will take place at the United Center, on the west side of America’s third-largest city, and run from Aug. 19 to Aug. 22 next year, according to the DNC.

The decision comes as a cause for celebration in Chicago, and centers the speech-filled nominating convention in the unofficial capital of the Midwest, politically valuable turf that helped vault Joe Biden to the presidency.

[ Mayor Adams makes bid for Democratic National Convention to come to NYC in 2024 ]

Republicans plan to hold their nominating convention about 100 miles north in Milwaukee, the largest city in purple Wisconsin, which went for Biden in 2020 and former President Donald Trump in 2016.

Biden has said he plans to run for reelection in 2024. Trump has launched a campaign and is seen as the early favorite to win the Republican nomination, despite his indictment in New York and other legal clouds hanging over him.

In a statement, Biden described Chicago as a “great choice” for the DNC convention, adding that his party will “gather to showcase our historic progress including building an economy from the middle out and bottom up, not from the top down.”

“From repairing our roads and bridges, to unleashing a manufacturing boom, and creating over 12.5 million new good-paying jobs, we’ve already delivered so much for hard working Americans — now it’s time to finish the job,” Biden said in the statement.

Illinois is led by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a left-leaning Democrat who has been floated as a possible alternative for his party if Biden, 80, decides not to run.

Pritzker said in a statement that the nominating convention will highlight his party’s “vision for lifting up working families and those who too often have been left out and left behind.”

Chicago is currently in the middle of a mayoral handoff from one Democrat, Lori Lighfoot, to another, Brandon Johnson. Johnson, a progressive county commissioner and labor organizer, won a runoff election last week, and is scheduled to be sworn in as mayor next month.

Mayor Adams, who has been tapped as a campaign surrogate for Biden, had publicly lobbied for the nominating convention to come to New York City, but his efforts came up short.

Adams congratulated Lightfoot and Johnson on Tuesday, and said he was proud of his team’s efforts to put together New York’s convention bid.

“While we were hopeful that New York City would be selected, we knew that the DNC’s number one priority would be to ensure the President’s re-election, so it was clear from the outset there would be a strong push to host the convention in a battleground region,” Adams said in a statement.

“In the end, this turned out to be an insurmountable hurdle,” he added.

New York last hosted the Democratic National Convention in 1992. Milwaukee hosted the convention in 2020, and Philadelphia hosted in 2016.

The convention has come to Chicago 11 times before.

The 1968 convention was perhaps the most memorable held in Chicago: It was enveloped by massive Vietnam War protests that included fiery confrontations with cops, some of whom beat the demonstrators.

The DNC said it had sent a team to review Atlanta, Chicago, Houston and New York as potential 2024 sites, and entered into contract negotiations late last year before settling on Chicago.

“Chicago is a world-class city that looks like America and demonstrates the values of the Democratic Party,” Johnson said in a statement. “We are unmatched when it comes to hosting events of this scale.”