WASHINGTON — What happens in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas if the Republican Party decides to hold its 2016 political convention in Sin City, a top Democratic super PAC is threatening.
American Bridge, a well-funded political action committee, plans to flood the GOP convention site with “trackers” brandishing video cameras to monitor anyone GOP delegates and officeholders who might misbehave.
“If the RNC does choose Las Vegas . . . what happens in Vegas . . . will go right here,” the group taunted on a new Web page called sincitygop.com.
“In making their selection, Republicans would do well to remember that Las Vegas is already the city with the most cameras per capita of anywhere on the planet,” the site notes, in an apparent effort to talk the GOP out of choosing Vegas, the population center of hotly-contested Nevada.
The group already plans to hire dozens of trackers to shadow Republicans at campaign events and is prepared to flood the Las Vegas strip during convention week if it’s chosen. Anything damning could end up in political ads.
Las Vegas is one of eight finalists under consideration by the Republican National Committee. Others, including Cleveland, Kansas City and Phoenix, have less of a reputation for revelry.
A Democratic source told Politico the trackers — usually twenty-somethings toting hand-held cameras — “would be looking to capture everything from the late-night carousing of politicians to simply filming candidates who claim to be the bastion of family values entering and exiting bars and casinos.”
Cameras are prohibited in the city’s famous strip clubs.