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Job Title: C.E.O. of national party convention |
Maria Cino has been thinking a lot about balloons lately.
The C.E.O. and president of the Republican National Convention has nightmares about mishaps like the 2004 Democratic convention when the celebratory balloons failed to release following John Kerry’s acceptance speech, causing much embarrassment. To guard against anything similar happening with the 200,000 balloons on tap at this year’s Republican convention, Cino has 300 pounds of confetti ready to drop at a moment’s notice.
It’s just one of the many details Cino worries about since she started planning the convention more than 18 months ago. The four-day extravaganza in the Twin Cities is expected to draw 45,000 people, and transportation, accommodations, and security must be arranged for all of them, in addition to arranging for logistics and technology for all the events and speeches. Since January, her staff has swelled from a skeletal crew of some 12 planners to a force of 150 full-time employees, who in turn oversee an army of volunteers.
"We are basically a Fortune 500 company created overnight," she says. "We start with nothing and end up with about a $125 million budget and 10,000 volunteers to put together a four-day event. Then we tear it down in about two weeks and the company closes." The budget is comprised of a $50 million grant from Congress for security (one is given to each party); $17 million from the Federal Election Commission; and up to $58 million raised by the host city’s Republican committee.
Part party planner, part politician, and part entrepreneur, the job of convention C.E.O.—a position that turns over every four years—is broad and fast-paced and unlike anything found in politics. It’s something Cino considered when R.N.C. Chairman Mike Duncan offered her the convention job over cheeseburgers in January 2007. Up until then, Cino’s 25-year career had included chief of staff to former congressman Bill Paxon of upstate New York, and then following him to the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, which guided the successful effort by Republicans to win control of Congress in 1994. Eventually, she rose to deputy chairwoman for the Republican National Committee; and later, under President Bush, Cino was appointed Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Commerce during his first term, and Deputy Secretary of Transportation during his second.
"As I started thinking about it, I realized it’s the only job I haven’t had at the national committee, aside from being chairman," she says. "It’s a great opportunity. Instead of being the No. 2, I’m the No. 1—president and C.E.O. of my own company."
Indeed, Cino delegates like a corporate C.E.O., setting the mandates for seven division heads handling everything from transportation to decorations and music, then making sure preparations proceed according to plan.
Naturally, the last days of preparation are the most intense, with a litany of staff meetings and walk-throughs and questions (do the 560 individual televisions screens that make up the big screen function in unison? Are the aisles too narrow? How is the cell-phone reception around the arena? Are there enough buses to move 45,000 people through the city?).
The magnitude of the task is apparently enough to obscure party loyalties. Cino says she’s been in regular contact over the months with her counterpart over at the Democratic National Convention, Leah Daughtry.
"We all talk—we all have the same nightmares a couple days before the convention," she says. "It’s a profession."
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