Republican convention chief faces daunting responsibilities

When former Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta was trying to convince Maria Cino to become his deputy, he said he had to put on the “full-court press” to keep her from the private sector.

Cino even tried to explain to Mineta that she didn’t know anything about transportation.

{mosads}“I’ve never even ridden a bus,” Mineta recalled Cino telling him.

Now Cino is once again entering uncharted territory. In her new job as president and chief executive of the 2008 Republican National Convention, Cino will be dealing with buses, busloads and seemingly a million other moving parts.
Her former boss insists she is up to the job.

“You can parachute her into any situation,” Mineta said, adding that Cino can “make the trains run on time, even though we could never get Amtrak to run on time.”

In an interview with The Hill this week, Cino described the challenges of building the national convention, or “the Super Bowl of politics,” as she puts it, from the ground up.

Cino said she began by looking at the last three conventions, calling the people who organized them and putting in place a staff that essentially can build a Fortune 500 company from the ground up — and dismantle it the day after the convention ends.

“I really tried to take the best of the best ideas,” she said.

Cino has hired a staff of about 15 people that eventually will expand to 150. They found office space near the Minnesota site, the Xcel Energy Center, and have started the process of looking at vendors, hotels and a multitude of other logistics.

“It’s a thousand pieces that you’re trying to put together,” Cino said.

In the course of the interview, Cino repeatedly mentioned the staff she has put together so far, noting their abilities, enthusiasm and lack of ego.

Mel Raines, a former assistant to Vice President Cheney for political affairs and a veteran of the 2000 and 2004 conventions, has signed on as vice president.

Dan Puhl, a Minnesotan, will serve as chief financial officer, while Matt Burns, most recently of Veterans Affairs and a veteran himself of the 2004 convention, is the communications director and spokesman.

And for those delegates and media types out there wondering who they should kiss up to for a primo hotel location, Shannon Boozman, Rep. John Boozman’s (R-Ark.) daughter and a former Bush administration official, has been named deputy director of hotels, venues and master calendar.

Somewhat surprisingly, one of Cino’s allies in the gargantuan undertaking is her counterpart, Democratic National Convention chief executive Mike Dino, who faces an equally daunting task in Denver.

“We’ve collaborated on security money, different vendors and different projects … we bounce ideas off each other,” Cino said, adding that she and Dino want each other to be successful — at least until November 2008.

Cino is a veteran of Republican politics, joking that Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Mike Duncan was able to convince her to take the job because “it’s the only job that I haven’t had at the RNC.”

In the 2004 presidential race, Cino was RNC deputy chairman, working as the committee’s top political strategist and chief operating officer. And in the 2000 race, she was the RNC’s deputy chairwoman for political and congressional relations while serving as national political director for then-Gov. George W. Bush in Austin, Texas.

Cino got her start in Republican politics working for former Rep. Bill Paxon (R-N.Y.) before moving on to work as executive director and chief operating officer of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Ken Mehlman, former RNC chairman and campaign manager for President Bush’s 2004 reelection, said Cino brings a host of talents and abilities to the task because she has held so many different political roles, including the role of hiring Mehlman to the first Bush presidential campaign in 2000.

“This is a massive undertaking and a big challenge,” Mehlman said. “What’s unique about Maria is the number of hats she can herself wear.”

Now Cino faces a new challenge: how best to build a national springboard of a convention for a candidate to be named later.

“You’re building a house, and you’re leaving the interior decorating … to the nominee,” she said.

That house — or Fortune 500 company — likely will face a takeover once a candidate has been nominated. Cino insists her staff is ready to help the nominee and their designated convention staff in any way possible.

“I kind of know what’s coming,” she said. “Unity and family are going to be extremely important here. At the end of the process, when we have a nominee, we become one family.”

For now, she said, she has not talked to any of the campaigns, and for a change, “It’s kind of nice to sit on the sidelines.”
Cino currently is dividing her time between Washington and the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, but she has found a place to live in the Land of 10,000 Lakes and will make the move soon.

With only 14 months to go, 45,000 delegates (a few of whom will be unhappy about something), as well as countless local, national and international journalists (almost all of whom will be unhappy about something), will soon be making the trip to see the house that Cino built.

When it’s time for the show to begin, Cino said, she’ll be ready to roll up her sleeves and dig in with every last detail.

“If we have to start blowing up balloons, we will,” she said.