Final bill on the Barackopolis: $5.3 million

posted at 10:31 am on October 24, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Keep this figure in mind when people claim that the $150,000 the RNC spent on Sarah Palin’s wardrobe represents some kind of frivolity.  At least she’s going to wear the clothes more than once, and it may raise some decent funds for charity at the end of the campaign.  The Democrats spent an additional $5.3 million on the Barackopolis at Invesco Field, after spending over $14 million to outfit the Pepsi Center:

In its FEC filing, the host committee said it incurred $53.67 million in operating expenses and spent $53.86 million.

Most of that money went to pay expenses of the Democratic National Convention Committee, the party organization that staged the DNC. Nine percent of the host committee’s money went to pay its own expenses, which included salaries, marketing and staging various events off the convention grounds.

Convention expenses paid by the committee included $14.1 million for construction costs, including the stage and lighting, at the Pepsi Center and $5.3 million at Invesco Field.

The host committee had several fundraising shortfalls before the convention, but managed to eventually outstrip their goals — and they needed every penny.  The original $40 million estimate bloated out to over $53 million, thanks to poor planning and the change in venue on the last night.  Barack Obama’s efforts to woo special interests did the trick in covering the bill.

Under those circumstances, the extra $5.3 million for the vanity platform at Invesco seems like a strange and very frivolous spending choice.  Obama could have given the same (uninspiring) speech at the Pepsi Center and saved millions of dollars.  This isn’t the same as buying a wardrobe for a candidate who lacked one; Democrats had already spent almost $15 million on the Pepsi Center.  Obama had a perfectly good stage on which to accept his nomination and demanded another for his own ego.

Will all of the media outlets who rushed to expose the $150,000 wardrobe cost for a middle-class VP candidate report on the millions spent to feed Barack Obama’s grandeur?

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