Texas Democrats face 80-mile commute to 2020 convention

Texas delegates at next year’s Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee will face a long commute from their hotel to the party’s signature event where the presidential nominee will be named.

The Texans will stay in Rosemont, a suburb in northwest Chicago near O’Hare International Airport that is more than 80 miles from Fiserv Forum, the site of the convention, a spokesman for the Texas Democratic Party told the American-Statesman on Friday.

Hotel assignments, determined by the Democratic National Committee, were obtained Thursday by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Thanks to a lack of available hotels in the host city, joining the Texans in Rosemont will be delegates from Alabama, American Samoa, California, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Tennessee, Washington and Wyoming.

All will be shuttled back and forth to Milwaukee, a commute across the Illinois-Wisconsin state line that could take 90 minutes or more, according to the Journal Sentinel.

In total, 31 delegations will be staying in the Milwaukee area, and 26 will stay in the northern suburbs of Chicago.

"We'll make the best out of it," said Glen Maxey, the legislative affairs director of the Texas Democratic Party, noting that "this is not the farthest away we've ever been" from a convention site.

"I have spent more than an hour going from South Austin to North Austin before," Maxey said. "You make the best out of what you got."

The convention will be July 13-16, and the Democratic National Committee is expected to release the official list of hotel assignments at a meeting this weekend in San Francisco. Committee representatives did not respond to requests for comment Friday.