Houston, you have a convention coming your way in 2028.

So says the head of the Republican National Committee, who this week announced that the nation’s fourth-largest city will play host to the GOP presidential nominating convention.

This is a big deal and I am going to set my partisan spurs aside for a moment and congratulate the city for landing this big-league event.

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel praised Houston’s sales job in persuading the committee to stage its 2028 convention there. She credits the city’s growth in Hispanic residents as a key factor in the party returning to the Bayou City. “We all know that Hispanic voters have been shifting toward the Republican Party. Texans like Monica De La Cruz and Tony Gonzales and Ted Cruz and Mayra Flores have been front and center leading that charge in 2022,” McDaniel said.

I had the pleasure of attending the 1992 GOP convention in Houston while I was working for the Beaumont Enterprise, which is part of the Hearst Newspapers group. It was the second consecutive GOP convention I got to cover, as I attended the 1988 event in New Orleans.

These events are a complete blast to cover. You get a ringside seat at a four-day-long party in which attendees wear ridiculous costumes, complete with elephant ears and vests festooned with pins and badges. Then you realize they are there to nominate a candidate for president of the United States; that’s when it becomes obvious how ridiculous it seems.

I attended the 2012 Democratic convention in Charlotte and I will tell you the Democrats do precisely the same thing.

The Texas Tribune reports:

McDaniel thanked Houston’s Democratic Mayor Sylvester Turner, Gov. Greg Abbott and the city’s host committee in their efforts to bring the convention to the country’s fourth largest city.

“Texas is the heart of the conservative movement,” Abbott tweeted following the announcement. “Together, we’ll secure Republican victories up and down the ballot to chart a brighter course for our party and our nation.”

Despite their party differences, McDaniel said Turner was a “great partner” in selecting the host city and helped put together “one of the best bids I have ever seen for any city for any convention.”

Of course, Mayor Turner is going to go all out to lure the GOP.  The money generated by this event knows no partisan divide.