The Connector

Jeff Larson was little known locally before he chaired the committee that worked to attract the GOP convention to the Twin Cities. But Larson has long held considerable back-office clout in the party as a former regional political director for the Republican National Committee and as a partner in locally based FLS Connect, a firm that manages voter-contact and campaign fundraising programs for Republican candidates. FLS Connect owns three call centers in Minnesota and one in Arizona.

Although he continues to run the company, Larson now spends 80 percent of his day running the Minneapolis–St. Paul Host Committee for the 2008 Republican National Convention. He works in an almost comically empty 50,000-square-foot downtown St. Paul office suite long ago vacated by a division of Burlington Northern. By midsummer, the space will be overflowing with paid staff and hundreds of the 10,000 volunteers that the host committee will recruit for the event.

You’ve been involved for more than two decades in efforts to attract the national GOP convention to the Twin Cities. What was different this time?

JL There were really four pieces that came together. The first is that we learned what worked and what didn’t. Second, we added a lot of new quality hotels in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Bloomington. Third, we had a good mix of people who knew about typical conventions, and political people who understood what was important to the Republican National Commit-tee [RNC] and the Democratic National Committee. And the fourth thing was our spectacular venue. The selection committee members were very impressed with the combination of the Xcel Center, which will host the convention, and RiverCentre, which would be used for the media.

Does the national GOP confer a certain national geographical importance to this region? 

JL Minneapolis–St. Paul gets 80 percent of the entire Minnesota media market, so clearly we’re going to dominate Minnesota, but we also go into Western Wisconsin and into Iowa. All three were target states in the last two presidential elections, and my guess is they’ll be targets again in 2008. But I really think it was more of a business decision. They looked at: Who can raise the money? What does the venue look like? What are the transportation needs?