St. Paul's X would have been surrounded by a herd of elephants in September if TivoliToo had its way.
The Mendota Heights company that designs and creates sculptures, including the "Peanuts" series, wanted to make 50 elephants for John McCain's presidential nomination party.
"It was proposed to the Republican National Convention," said Hart Johnson, business partner at the company his sister Randi Johnson started.
"Our idea was that each state would give us 10 or 12 things that best define the state and we would do a collage," he said. "Every state would have its name down the right front leg and the elephants would circle the Xcel Energy Center. It would basically be advertising for the states." Each state would own its elephant sculpture and take it home after the convention.
Sue Gonsior, PR woman for Capital City Partnership (CCP), which works to promote St. Paul, told me Monday: "The RNC really didn't have anything to do with it. Logistically, it was difficult to get each state informed enough about it and figure out how they were going to fund it. I think we started too late. We didn't build the momentum for it, and that was really about it."
Hart Johnson felt the idea was presented well in advance. "We went to the MSP 2008 Host Committee showcase last August, but we started talking to them in June, and presented the concept and many people were excited about it," he said. "We had contacts from every state who saw it and were like, Sign me up, and some of them said, Well, that's a lot of money."
Johnson would not disclose a price to me, but he said CCP would have set the final number, which would have likely been higher. Johnson also said he made a careful, indirect contact with the RNC because he didn't want to step on any toes over at CCP, whose Gonsior pronounced the prototype "absolutely darling."
Cyndi Lesher, prez of the host committee, said, "It just didn't feel feasible at the time" because they were starting up the host committee and doing fund-raising.
