No surprise

City misses DNC fundraising deadline:

The committee charged with raising $40.6 million in cash for the Democratic National Convention fell more than $11 million short of that figure and missed today's contractual deadline. . . .

Not that is was a surprise to one of the fundraising point men — Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.

Hickenlooper was the one who let the cat out of the bag about a month ago when he said the Denver 2008 Host Committee was $15 million short, creating an avalanche of speculation about the shortfall. Shortly after that, the host committee announced it was scaling back delegation parties from more than 50 to a single event.

The mayor said on a fundraising trip to Kansas City this weekend that he knew they wouldn't meet the contractual deadline set up by the Democratic National Convention Committee.

"I've always made my peace with that [how nice for you]. It's no different than trying to get a restaurant open. Some of the restaurants we did, we didn't get as much money as we wanted to and so you end up having to adjust the budget. So you didn't spend as much money on the lighting or you didn't spend as much on this or that [just suggestions]," Hickenlooper said. "This thing is going to happen, but the more resources we bring to it, the more successful it will be for the city."

Damn you, Chickenpooper.