After the Republican convention, Milwaukee wonders if it was worth it

The Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee brought 50,000 visitors to the city, but a variety of factors led to lower-than-expected business activity in the city’s downtown area. Many local residents in the largely Democratic city stayed away. Security fences surrounding the convention center made it difficult for delegates to get to bars and restaurants just outside the secure zone. And during the convention, some of the more than 4,000 extra law enforcement officers who came from states all over the country shot and killed a man more than a mile from the convention’s security perimeter.

Agreeing to hold the convention was a controversial decision among Milwaukeeans, who debated if the potential economic effect was worth inviting thousands of representatives of a party that has spent years demonizing the city. On Friday, as those visitors streamed out of the city and its regularly scheduled summer programming of street festivals, bike rides and beer gardens got back underway, the debate continued, with locals still wondering if the disruption was worth it.

Over the weekend leading to the convention’s opening on Monday, the signs of change were apparent. The security footprint established around the Fiserv Forum — where the RNC was held — created long lines of congested traffic in the downtown area. Helicopters piloted by military and law enforcement agencies circled overhead day and night. Coast Guard boats, mounted with M240 Bravo belt-fed machine guns, patrolled the Milwaukee River and police saturated the nearby streets.

On Tuesday morning the outlook for the rest of the week wasn’t dire. Mayor Cavalier Johnson, speaking to the Wisconsin Examiner in his office at City Hall, said that local festivals had benefited from RNC-sponsored events, and that Milwaukee was getting a lot of positive attention.

“There’s been minimal issues reported, that’s what I found out in my briefings from the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD),” Johnson said. “Folks are engaged — the people who are here — and I’ve had a chance to talk to a number of them from across the country, and really around the world even, if you include the foreign press. They’ve all been impressed with Milwaukee. Many have said that they will look forward to coming back and spending time in the city. And that’s good.”

For four straight days, images of Milwaukee appeared around the globe.

But business and restaurant traffic in the downtown area was down, failing to offer the massive economic boost that had been promised. Johnson suspected that was due to delays in the arrival of former President Donald Trump, who just a few days before the convention began, narrowly avoided an assassination attempt by a gunman armed with an AR-15 style rifle at one of his rallies in Pennsylvania. The assassination attempt cast a shadow over the city as the RNC began. And yet, early into the RNC’s second day, Johnson said most of the convention attendee’s appeared to be enjoying themselves.

“These are Republicans coming from around the country who are coming here and are experiencing Milwaukee,” Johnson said. “They are all having a great time. I don’t know how many Republicans I’ve talked to who have said this is a fantastic city, it’s a remarkable city. They are actually on the ground here and experiencing Milwaukee for what it is. So I’m hopeful that, you know, their experience would also then translate to Republicans who are in-state as well.”

Johnson stressed that, “a strong, thriving, growing Milwaukee ultimately is good for the entire state of Wisconsin.”

But Gary Witt, the President and CEO of the Milwaukee-based Pabst Theater Group — who ahead of the convention had lamented the lack of reservations from RNC attendees at local businesses — told the Examiner the effect of the convention was “muted,” saying it was similar to 2020 when the Democratic National Convention, planned to be held in Milwaukee, was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think the disappointment there is we got caught up in a giant sales pitch,” Witt said. “We’re a city that’s incredibly needy for big events to happen here. This should not in any way deter us from trying to get those big events to happen here, but we should not just blindly walk our way into those events without understanding the potential.”

The city, Witt added, “just open arms accepted the reality that it was going to be this $200 million investment,” when “it turns out the pie was not even really served as a net result. The experience for the majority of downtown, the similarity to the DNC would be that the RNC was eerily similar to the pandemic, restaurants and bars with no activity whatsoever. The DNC and RNC had one thing in common, the one thing in common is they both created scenarios that were near pandemic like.”

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley also expressed hopes that the RNC would help raise the county’s profile. “This is a great opportunity for us to showcase our community and all the great things that we have to offer for folks, no matter what background they come from, or where they come from,” Crowley told the Wisconsin Examiner, in an interview Tuesday morning. “We have a great outdoor space scene, great beach, great food scene as well.”

But Witt said he thinks the effect of the four-day advertisement for the city was less than powerful. Because downtown Milwaukee didn’t have enough hotel rooms for all convention attendees, many stayed in hotels as far away as Madison and were unable to hang around after convention events ended for food and drinks in the city. Plus, the security situation because of the assassination attempt kept downtown “closed tighter than a Tupperware lid,” which encouraged attendees to remain behind the black metal gates of the hard security perimeter.

“I think it was incredibly muted and not at all what anyone would have hoped it would have been,” Witt said. “I don’t think it’s the fault of the mayor or the city of Milwaukee, it’s the fault of the RNC and the scenario the city was dealt with at the convention, much like we were dealt with the DNC.”

With Milwaukee being a historically Democratic city, some city residents wondered why it was chosen to host the RNC. Not long before the convention began Republican nominee Donald Trump told Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives that Milwaukee is “a horrible city.”

At the state-level, Milwaukee has long suffered from its strained relationship with the Republican-controlled Legislature. That dynamic defined negotiations over a local sales tax and shared revenue funding from the state. By the end of those negotiations last year, Milwaukee was allowed to avert fiscal catastrophe in exchange for reversing certain police reform policies passed after 2020. The city’s Fire and Police Commission, one of the oldest citizen-led oversight boards nationwide, was forced to surrender its powers to set policy for the police department as part of the funding deal with the state Legislature

Citing things like the sales tax deal, increases to shared revenue, and ensuring that Milwaukee’s professional baseball team stayed in the city, Johnson said that working on a bipartisan basis with the Republicans has already accomplished a lot. “That was a win for us,” said Johnson.

“That all came because we were able to work collaboratively with Republicans and Madison, in order to make that happen.” Johnson said he hopes that moving into the future, more people see that “you can actually work with the leadership here in Milwaukee to get stuff done, too.”

Crowley said he felt that the Republican Party “appreciated the fact that we did this [the RNC], but I don’t think this is necessarily the single one thing that’s going to improve that relationship.” As a former state legislator, Crowley has direct experience trying to work across the aisle. The county executive hopes, going forward, that work can be done to change “the narrative of how people view Milwaukee.”

Witt said city leaders making the shared revenue deal and agreeing to hold the RNC shows that the city has “new, fresh leadership” able to negotiate with Republicans. But the result was a trade-off, the upside of which, he said, only dug Milwaukee out of a hole created by Republican legislators denigrating Milwaukee and starving it of funding for 20 years.

“The state has been holding us hostage for over 20 years on shared revenue, they’ve been choking us to death,” Witt said. “We are the engine. If Wisconsin’s a motorboat, Milwaukee is the engine and you better put gas in the engine.”

On Tuesday afternoon, out-of-state police from Columbus Ohio fatally shot an unhoused Milwaukee man. The officers were standing in King Park, an area known for its high population of unhoused city residents, when they noticed two men fighting while at least one of them held a knife. Within 14 seconds, the officers had rushed over and fired shots, killing the man identified as Samuel Sharpe Jr.

That evening, mourners gathered to hold a vigil, and Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman told media that five officers had fired in an attempt to save someone’s life. The shooting is being investigated by the Greenfield Police Department, part of the Milwaukee Area Investigative Team which normally investigates officer-involved deaths. This was the eighth time this year that Columbus, Ohio officers have been involved in a shooting. As Norman prepared to deliver the update about Sharpe, who was not identified during the press conference, news broke that he is a finalist for a police chief job in Austin, Texas.

Sharpe’s killing created a wave of anger, fear, sadness, and questions in the community. Many wondered why the out-of-state officers were more than a mile outside the RNC’s security footprint, despite assurances made by MPD that such officers would not be patrolling nearby communities during the RNC. The next day, Norman announced that Milwaukee officers would accompany their out-of-state counterparts when entering nearby communities. The shooting, however, also rekindled a larger conversation about the needs of the hundreds of people living unhoused, and on the street throughout Milwaukee. On Wednesday night, much further away from the convention grounds, Milwaukee police exchanged gunfire with a man outside of a gas station with the man sustaining non-life threatening injuries.

At a Thursday morning press conference, Johnson said the city’s performance and preparation during the RNC had gone “pretty smoothly,” adding that “I want more big conventions, more big sporting events, more entertainment events, and other large meetings, and I want them to take place right here in this city.”

Johnson reiterated what he told the Wisconsin Examiner Tuesday morning, that convention attendees had “very, very positive impressions of Milwaukee.” The mayor is excited for Milwaukee to be what people think about when they think of Wisconsin, or even of the whole Midwest Johnson said that despite hosting the convention, he does not support Trump’s policies, and that inside the Fiserv Forum during the convention there was “a false narrative of gloom, a false narrative of blame, a message from Republicans that simply is not true.”

During the press conference on Thursday, Johnson said “the RNC is not the end, it’s the beginning.” The mayor hopes that after this “four day commercial,” another “uptick in interest” will come to Milwaukee.

Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on Facebook and X.