News

Apple Festival could attract convention Democrats

By Bill Moss, Published: August 28, 2012

This year's North Carolina Apple Festival will offer fresh apples, samples of a new brand of ice cream and maybe more Democrats than usual.

"One thing we did this year (in marketing) was we reached into the Charlotte area because they've told us a lot of people will be looking at something to do" while they visit North Carolina, said David Nicholson, director of the North Carolina Apple Festival.
Nicholson got a call last week from CBS Evening News, which wanted to profile areas near Charlotte as part of its coverage of the Democratic National Convention.
He said Tuesday he had not heard back from CBS and did not know for sure whether a feature was planned.
"We've had about three phone calls from down there asking about the festival," he said. "For example, one of them was a Hispanic newspaper down there."
Beth Carden, the county's Travel and Tourism director, said although the local agency did not make a specific push to draw the Democrats, the state had been aggressively promoting tourism.
"We're hoping they're going to come this far up, and stay longer than just the convention," she said. "The state's really worked to try to promote people coming early and staying longer to experience all of North Carolina."
Carden said it would be hard to measure the political convention's impact until after it's over.
"The state has been predicting all along that it will (help tourism) and it's happened in other conventions that the whole state does feel the impact," she said. "The nice thing is we're just two hours away so it's very easy to get to."