Democrats have decided to move President Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention from Bank of America Stadium to the smaller Time Warner Arena, citing weather concerns, but the president’s campaign says they would have filled the stadium.
“We had 19,000 people on the wait list — no doubt we were going to fill it,” an Obama campaign official said after the decision to move the event was made, according to The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein.
Rumors have swirled that Obama’s team would move the speech to avoid the embarrassment of him speaking to a partially-empty stadium.
“[C]onvention sources exclusively told the MailOnline on Tuesday that the real reason for the switch was fears within the Obama campaign that there would be large numbers of empty seats in the 74,000-seater stadium,” The Daily Mail writes.
President Obama launched his re-election campaign in a half-empty arena at Ohio State University this year, despite his team predicting that an “overflow” of people would attend. The Washington Examiner’s Byron York is chalking the move up to the weather. “[A]fter hellacious storms here last two days, with forecast for more, I buy [the] weather excuse,” York tweeted. “Why risk accepting nomination in downpour?”
