For Ricky Ramirez, posting “stupid shit” on the Facebook page of his bar, the Mothership, is one way he draws in customers to taste the clever cocktails he crafts in Milwaukee’s trendy Bay View neighborhood.
Yet a March post that Ramirez wrote in his typically profanity-laced, punctuation-free style declaring that the bar would close over the period of the Republican national convention, which begins in Wisconsin’s most populous city next week, brought him the sort of attention he never wanted.
“Sup idiots we haven’t lost a lot of followers in a while so here we go … as everything gets amplified with like the RNC shitshow coming to town lmao I would like to formally state that we’re shutting bar down during the week of because fuck that noise,” Ramirez wrote.
“I’m not trying to get involved with or actively take money or rent the space out to that tomfoolery.”
The announcement of the temporary closure, which Ramirez wrote out of dissatisfaction with what both political parties have to offer ahead of the November election, attracted hundreds of likes and comments, and was written up by several major media outlets. But not long after, angry emails and messages began arriving, as well as outright threats, one of which was mailed from Florida, and which Ramirez said the police are investigating.
“There’s a lot of things that happen that I don’t agree with and I don’t ever want to like, you know, ruin someone’s life over it,” Ramirez said in an interview. “But people are really into this.”
Ramirez’s experience is the exception in a city where many businesses were hoping for a surge in bookings and reservations connected to the four-day convention, during which the GOP is expected to formally nominate Donald Trump as their presidential candidate.
Yet he is not alone in finding the RNC to be a confounding experience, even before its Monday opening. While many restaurants, bars and venues have indeed seen a flood of business connected to the convention, others have seen a mere trickle, or nothing at all.
“The whole big promise of what the RNC said it was going to be is not shaking out to be that way,” said Adam Siegel, the James Beard award-winning chef-owner of Lupi & Iris, a Mediterranean restaurant in downtown Milwaukee.
He had expected that one of the many organizations or businesses that sets up shop on the sidelines of the convention would book out his whole restaurant, which lies outside the convention’s security perimeter, and is regarded as one of Milwaukee’s finest eateries.
Instead, his only firm booking so far is a small dinner in one of his private rooms, and though he has received more inquiries lately, Siegel has put up signs reminding customers that they will remain accessible during the convention, in hopes of maintaining steady business.
Victor Matheson, an economics professor at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, who has studied the impact of political conventions on cities and their businesses, said conventions, with their crowds, security and road detours, can undercut other industries.
Bookings at Broadway theaters were down 20% compared with a typical summer week when Republicans held their convention in New York City in 2004, his research found. And unlike an event that brings similar demands on a city’s downtown, such as a city hosting the Super Bowl, political conventions don’t do much for civic pride, at least not in the current era of hyper-partisanship.
“These conventions are disruptive without any kind of glow associated with them,” Matheson said.
Milwaukee was initially supposed to host the Democratic national convention in 2020 until the party dramatically downsized that event and held much of it virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Now it will play host to Trump’s coronation, while the Democrats are expected to renominate Joe Biden later on in August, in Chicago.
“If you go back to when the DNC was going to be here in 2020, I mean, we saw inquiries, bookings, conversations about catering, stuff like that,” said Dan Jacobs, co-owner of American-Chinese restaurant DanDan. “This definitely doesn’t have the same feel whatsoever.”
The tourism bureau, Visit Milwaukee, estimates that 50,000 people will come to town for the convention, 16,000 hotel room nights will be booked and the total economic impact could rise to $200m. Venues as large as the American Family Field, where the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team plays, have reportedly been booked for parties connected to the convention.
The RNC could also give heightened prominence to GOP candidates in a swing state that is crucial to Trump’s hopes of retaking the White House, and where the party hopes to oust the Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin, who is up for re-election in November.
“It is a state that’s certainly in play politically. So if that drives people to come here to see our city, I just hope that the entire city views this as an opportunity to show off Milwaukee and Wisconsin in the best light possible,” said Paul Bartolotta, the chef and owner of the Bartolotta Restaurants, who said he had been “exceedingly pleased” with bookings for everything from buffet lunches to hors d’oeuvres receptions at his restaurants and catering venues.
“It’s an incredibly charged political environment, and you just need to let that noise go away and focus on taking care of your employees and making sure that we’re taking care of our guests.”
Gary Witt, president and CEO of the Pabst Theater Group, is bracing for a week in which he expects to lose about $100,000 since five of his six venues have no bookings connected to the convention, and many touring acts are avoiding the city. He wonders if things might have been different had Trump not staged a controversial takeover of the Republican National Committee earlier this year, or if the GOP had nominated a different candidate who would have attracted more donor support for the convention.
“Once the candidate was announced, there were tremendous changes that were placed that impacted the RNC by the candidate, and that created a lot more confusion and disorganization within the RNC, and probably added to the delays of getting anything done,” Witt said.
The former president did not help matters by reportedly calling Milwaukee a “horrible city” in a closed-door meeting with Republicans in Washington DC, though he tried to control the damage by declaring “I love Milwaukee” days later during a rally in nearby Racine. The predominantly Democratic city’s leaders are nonetheless rolling out the welcome mat, knowing that the convention could be a boon to its economy.
“I welcome those types of comments from a guy who has extremely bad taste,” Milwaukee’s Democratic county executive, David Crowley, said in an interview on the sidelines of an event hosted by the Biden-Harris campaign in Milwaukee, two weeks before the convention was to start.
“Our expectation is we’re going to have thousands of people descending on Milwaukee county, and it is our job to make sure that they have the greatest party that they have,” he said.
“Even though I don’t agree with any of their policies or their nominee, for us, it’s about how do we make sure that we can showcase our community, so in the future, we can bring more conventions and conferences to Milwaukee.”
