Minority firms struggled for 2000 party contracts

LOS ANGELES -- Armando Ogaz thought his company, Balloons in Motion, was sure to win a $100,000 contract to supply balloons for the balloon drop marking the christening of Al Gore as the Democratic Party's presidential nominee during its 2000 convention here.

After all, he does regular business with a number of California Democratic officials and with the sports teams who play at the Staples Center, where the 2000 convention was held. And to be honest, Ogaz was also counting on his Latino heritage to help him out, given that the Democrats made a very public point of saying they wanted to do business with minorities when the convention rolled into town.

"I felt that being Latino and having access to California's Latino delegation would be an insurance policy. It turned out to be a death knell," said Ogaz, who lost the bidding to another .rm. By his own estimation, Ogaz's mistake was in counting on his contacts within California's Latino political hierarchy.

While he was courting Latino state representatives and congressmen trying to win a deal, he neglected to talk with officials from the Democratic National Committee in Washington, which hires the convention's main producer, who in turn doles out contracts for everything from sound and lighting to stage construction to balloons.

Ogaz's missed opportunity could be a lesson for minority and female entrepreneurs in Boston who are chasing a piece of the Democratic convention pie.

Some minority business owners in Los Angeles said the Democrats did a good job of promoting their commitment to minority businesses, but didn't follow up with solid information on whom to contact regarding winning contracts. And others said that in retrospect, all the talk about how much business would be done with minority-owned firms only led to false hope among entrepreneurs, as there was simply just not that much business to go around. As a whole, they said they hope a better job is done by the Democrats in managing expectations and realities in doing business with Boston's black and Latino entrepreneurs.

"The hype leading into the convention made it seem like all you had to do was submit your name and your qualifications and you'd be getting business," said Ray Durazo, president of Durazo Communications, a Los Angeles advertising firm, and chairman of the Latin Business Association of California.

"A lot of minority business owners took that seriously and submitted their names and qualifications, and when it was over, they got nothing out of it," Durazo said.

The total amount of business the Democrats did with minorities in 2000 apparently never was tallied; neither the party's Boston convention office nor its national headquarters in Washington could provide the numbers.

According to published reports just before the 2000 convention, organizers had pledged to do at least $3 million in business with minority-owned .rms.

One of the most common complaints from minority business owners in Los Angeles was that they felt stymied in their efforts to do business with the Democrats because there was no clear process outlined for how to submit bids for work.

A look at how the Boston convention is set up spells out the problem.

There are two separate organizations working to organize the convention. One is an arm of the Democratic National Committee and is in charge of all events inside the FleetCenter, where the convention will be held. That group is responsible for about $15 million in convention-related spending and has hired both a construction management team and a convention producer, each of which will give out subcontracts to other .rms.

Then there is the Boston 2004 host committee, which, with a $49 million budget, is in charge of the parties and events for conventioneers off-site. The host committee also maintains a vendor directory of local small and minority-owned companies that want to do business with the convention.

Convention chief executive Rod O'Connor said the Democrats already have gone beyond a good-faith effort to award contracts to minority firms, noting that Primary Group, a black-owned architectural firm, is part of the three-company management team hired to work as general contractors for the convention. That team, led by Shawmut Design and Construction of Boston, is in charge of doling out $1.5 million worth of work on the convention.

He also noted that his organization deposited half of its $15 million budget with local minority-owned banks last year.

Primary Group's president, Kirk Sykes, credited Mayor Thomas M. Menino and the Democrats with working to ensure contracting parity for this year's convention.

But minority entrepreneurs have to be ready to take advantage of the opportunity.

"At some level, it's incumbent on us to elevate ourselves to be able to handle these opportunities," he said. "You can't waltz in here and expect people to give you the world if you're not ready for the world. It's so easy to complain."

Sykes, however, did acknowledge that his connections to Boston's political establishment helped his .rm win the lucrative convention deal. Primary Group has worked on city and state deals, including the design of the new Central Artery and the new Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, he said. Another arm of his company, Primary Corp., is building a 175-room Hampton Inn & Suites hotel in Roxbury's Crosstown Center development. The hotel, which won't be open until June, already has all its rooms booked for the week of the convention, Sykes said.

O'Connor acknowledged there are barriers to getting full participation, including potential confusion about who minority business owners should contact about submitting bids. "We feel like part of the burden is ours to make sure that people know about these opportunities. On our dime, were going to go out and find minority-owned firms," O'Connor said.

Ricky Kirshner, president of RK Productions, the New York producer hired by the Democrats for the Boston convention, said it's a bad idea for companies to expect that getting on the vendor directory will lead to convention business. It's a good first step, he said, but entrepreneurs need to make sure they follow up.

"The funny thing is, with all the vendor directories, I've gotten a lot of solicitations from companies on the Boston convention, and none of them is from Boston companies," Kirshner said.

"To get the business, you have to make us a pitch."

Drexell Muhammad said he bid for and won a $50,000 contract for his Drexell Equipment Co., to supply portable toilets for the 2000 convention. The contract was a boon to his nine-employee firm, he said, but that was only after he had to track down the right people to send his invoices to once the Democrats left town.

"It was toilets everywhere," he said.

"We had to go to three companies to get all the toilets. Then we had to fight to get our money after it was over."

Even though he got the business, Muhammad said he feels like doing business with minorities was more of an afterthought for the Democrats in 2000 than a priority.

"There's too much money in the DNC for black folks to not fare better than they do," he said.

Keith Reed can be reached at reed@globe.com.