Salt Lake City finds out next week if it will host 2012 GOP national convention

SALT LAKE CITY — Next week, GOP leaders will decide whether the 2012 Republican National Convention will be held in Salt Lake City, Phoenix or Tampa, Fla.

Backers of Salt Lake City's bid are keeping their fingers crossed. Tampa is widely seen as the front-runner, in large part because Florida will be a key battleground state in the next presidential race.

"Even though it's Tampa Bay's to lose, I think on some level it was ours to win," said Scott Beck, president and CEO of the Salt Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau. "We did a good job. I think it's a two-city race now."

Salt Lake bidders hosted the Republican National Committee's site selection team in early April. It toured a number of locations, including EnergySolutions Arena, where the GOP would formally nominate its presidential candidate if the city is chosen.

On Wednesday, the site selection team will meet with RNC Chairman Michael Steele at the party's Washington, D.C., headquarters to pick the city that will host an estimated 45,000 Republicans the week of Aug. 27, 2012.

"They'll make their selection at this meeting now," RNC spokeswoman Sara Sendak said Thursday, even though the city selected must still be ratified at the party's summer meeting in August.

The city chosen during the closed-door meeting will be announced by the RNC on Wednesday, Sendak said, and contract negotiations will begin in June.

Beck said that since the site selection team's three-day visit, Salt Lake City has met twice with RNC representatives who traveled to Utah about that contract as well as some concerns about hotels.

Salt Lake City has fewer large, full-service hotels in the downtown business district compared to its competitors, Beck said. "That's a hurdle," he said. The city would house GOP delegates in Salt Lake, Summit, Davis and Utah counties.

GOP Gov. Gary Herbert has said he believes Tampa will get the 2012 convention but that Salt Lake City has a good chance of winning the next party gathering, in 2016. Beck agreed.

"Absolutely," Beck said. "That's the way these things happen."

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