Democrat Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens torched the Democratic National Committee (DNC) this week after the party cut his city from consideration for its 2028 convention. He accused his own party of ignoring the South, dismissing Georgia, and taking Black voters for granted.
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The DNC narrowed its list Thursday from five cities to three. Atlanta and Chicago are out. The Aug. 7-10 convention will go to Boston, Denver, or Philadelphia. Republicans picked Houston for theirs.
The news did not come from Chairman Ken Martin or anyone else at the DNC. Dickens found out Wednesday when the Associated Press reported the finalists, the same way everyone else did. Then he wrote Martin a letter.
“The DNC continues to make the wrong choices,” Dickens wrote, according to Atlanta’s Fox 5, which obtained a copy of the letter.
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Dickens pointed to the 1996 Olympics, Super Bowl and college football playoff games, major concerts, and the eight World Cup matches held in Atlanta this summer. State Farm Arena, he added, is one of the busiest arenas in the country.
“For the DNC to not even include Atlanta in the shortlist means that the DNC does not consider Atlanta or Georgia relevant to the past, present, or future of the Democratic Party,” Dickens wrote.
Atlanta has not hosted the Democratic convention since 1988. The city also made a serious run at the 2024 convention, only to watch the DNC give that event to Chicago. This time, party officials visited Atlanta before eliminating the city again.
Dickens went after Martin’s judgment, too:
“They are afraid to leave their comfort zone and blind to the fact that the South is the answer. They are abandoning Atlanta, abandoning the South, and once again abandoning Black voters.”
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Atlanta, Dickens wrote, is “the crown jewel of the Southeast,” the country’s Black economic engine, and the cradle of the civil rights movement. Republicans chose Houston. Democrats left the South out of their final three. (Fox News)
“One party has chosen the South to host their convention, and the other has chosen the same region over and over again,” Dickens wrote. “This isn’t by accident. It’s an intentional choice.”
The DNC did not answer that part of the letter. Martin sent out a statement praising the cities still in the running.
“Boston, Denver, and Philadelphia all presented incredibly strong bids to host the convention, and we look forward to continuing to work with them as the DNC makes a final selection in the coming months.”
The party said it looked at hotels, arena space, local partners, fundraising, and whether a city shared Democratic values. Apparently, Atlanta, a majority-Black city with a Democratic mayor, home to the civil rights movement, did not clear that bar. DNC representatives saw the city for themselves in April, touring State Farm Arena and the Georgia World Congress Center.
Trump carried Georgia in 2024, four years after Biden won it. Both of its U.S. senators are Democrats. Georgia Democrat Party Chairman Charlie Bailey called it the country’s “premier battleground state” and promised to keep fighting regardless of what the DNC does.
The DNC pointed to South Carolina after Dickens’ criticism. The state will vote first on the party’s 2028 primary calendar, beginning Jan. 22. For a party that just passed over Atlanta twice, putting South Carolina first on the primary calendar is a thin substitute for actually showing up in the South. Other Southern Democrat leaders still warn that Black voters are tired of having their loyalty taken for granted.
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Martin has enough trouble already. The DNC is carrying debt and getting outpaced by Republicans on fundraising heading into the midterms, a structural disadvantage that makes alienating a key constituency look less like strategy and more like self-destruction. At a recent party meeting in Texas, he asked Democrats to unite around winning the House and Senate.
That appeal for unity did not make much of an impression in Atlanta. The DNC now has three convention finalists and a Democratic mayor in one of the country’s most important battleground states publicly accusing party leaders of abandoning the voters they expect to save them.
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