Behind the Funding of Summer’s Political Party Conventions: New at Reason

In the October issue of Reason magazine, Anthony L. Fisher takes a look at how the major party conventions are now being paid for in the wake of a new law passed in 2014:

Here’s one bright spot in a bleak election year: This summer’s Democratic and Republican conventions were not subsidized by taxpayers.

In 2012, the public contributions to those distinguished demonstrations of democracy—the shows where you could see Clint Eastwood hectoring an empty chair or a weepy video tribute to Ted Kennedy—ran upwards of $18.2 million each (not including the cost of security), according to a May 2016 report from the Congressional Research Service. But this year, for the first time since 1972, the parties and their host cities’ host committees were on the hook to raise all the money to stage their own four-day infomercials. Under the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act, passed in 2014, funds that once went to subsidize political conventions have been diverted to pediatric health care research.

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