Donald Trump's 2020 campaign manager is leading an effort by local business leaders to try to convince the city to bid to host the 2020 Republican National Convention, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Brad Parscale is head of Giles-Parscale, a local web development firm. He was the Trump campaign's highly successful Digital Director in the 2016 campaign, and two months ago he was named campaign manager for the President's re-election effort.
A Republican delegation was in fact in San Antonio during the Final Four earlier this month, but apparently went away unimpressed with San Antonio's options, prompting City officials to drop the matter.
But Parscale is keeping up the heat, tweeting on Wednesday, "Another mayor makes an epic political mistake that takes a possible 200MM from the community. Why? I want to rip the last hair out of my head. Maybe he is just waiting on Mayor Sculley (a reference to City Manager Sheryl Sculley) to decide for him."
In a memo circulated by Mayor Nirenberg obtained by 1200 WOAI news, he says he has learned that after the Final Four meeting, the GOP has 'renewed his interest in San Antonio,' but he is concerned about the prospect of spending millions of taxpayer dollars to 'subsidize any political convention.'
City Hall sources say the issue will be brought up as a discussion item before City Council next week, but several Council members feel it would be a loss for the city, with the responsibility to spend tens of millions of dollars on everything from facilities improvements to police overtime.
But Parscale didn't let up.
When Mayor Nirenberg urged Congress to 'update the 1996 law that bars flights from San Antonio to Washington Reagan National Airport, Parscale shot back, "Are you saying that to the Republican Congress you just rejected?"
San Antonio actively campaigned for several Republican and Democratic presidential nominating conventions in the 1980s and 1990s, but stopped participating in the bidding some time ago.
The conventional wisdom has been growing that political conventions are not the 'major game changers' that cities used to believe they were.
Most major networks no longer provide round the clock coverage of Presidential nominating conventions any more, considering them to be 'free advertising for the political party and its candidate. In addition, the benefits to local residents are hard to quantify. Local residents would have to deal with massive week-long traffic tie-ups, while City government would have to spend millions in police overtime and other special amenities for the delegates.