MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee loves its Miller Beer, Brewers baseball and “Bronze Fonz” statue.

The deepest-blue city in swing state Wisconsin, Milwaukee also loves Democrats.

So it can be hard for some to swallow that Milwaukee is playing host to former President Donald Trump and the Republican National Convention that begins Monday.

Adding to the angst, owners of local restaurants, bars and venues say the number of reservations that were promised during the Republican convention aren’t materializing. And protesters complained the city was trying to keep them too far away from the convention site to have an impact.

“I wish I was out of town for it,” Jake Schneider, 29, said as he passed by the city’s statue of Fonzie, the character played by Henry Winkler in the 1970s sitcom “Happy Days” that was set in Milwaukee. “I’m not super happy that it’s the Republican Party coming to town.”

Schneider, who lives in a apartment downtown, said Trump “sabotaged himself” with his comments about Milwaukee.

“I hope he’s proven wrong and sees how wonderful of a city it is,” Schneider said.

Ryan Clancy, a self- described democratic socialist who is a state representative and serves on the Milwaukee County Board, puts it more bluntly: “It is shameful that we rolled out the red carpet for the RNC.”

Still, Democratic and Republican convention boosters point to the potential economic boon and chance to show off Milwaukee and Wisconsin during the convention that runs through Thursday.

Wisconsin is one of a handful of battleground states likely to determine this year’s presidential race. It was one of the so-called blue wall states that Democrats once relied on, but Trump narrowly won in 2016, paving the way for his surprise victory. Biden flipped the state back in 2020, and both campaigns are targeting it heavily this year.

But there’s nothing swing about Milwaukee. It voted 79% for Biden in 2020. After his loss that year, Trump fought unsuccessfully to disqualify thousands of voters in Milwaukee, falsely portraying late-arriving returns driven by heavy absentee turnout as fraud.

Republicans say staging the convention in Milwaukee will energize their base. While the city itself is Democratic, the outlying suburbs are a battleground within a battleground state. Once deeply red, Democrats have made inroads since 2016 as suburban women, in particular, drift away from Trump and the conservative agenda.

Before the city was even chosen to host the convention, Clancy and other Democrats urged Milwaukee to drop out of the running, as Nashville did after Democrats there objected to hosting Republicans.

But by far the biggest kerfuffle came in June when Trump used the word “horrible” in talking about Milwaukee during a closed-door meeting with Republicans in Congress. While those in attendance disagreed over whether Trump was talking about crime, election concerns or something else, and he later said in a Wisconsin rally that he “loved” Milwaukee, for some Democrats it only reaffirmed earlier concerns about playing host to Republicans.

As the convention nears, some local business owners are questioning estimates that the convention will bring in $200 million in revenue.

Only one of the six venues run by the Pabst Theater Group in Milwaukee is booked for the week of the convention, said Gary Witt, the group’s president and CEO. Witt said he will lose more than $100,000 by not having venues used, and he’s concerned about the impact the convention will have on other Milwaukee businesses.

“Once these people are all gone, we’re meaningless to them anyway,” Witt said of convention attendees.

Demonstrators are trying to spread counterprogramming throughout the week, but have argued they’re being kept too far from the convention sites.

Omar Flores, chairman of the March on the RNC Coalition, said he’s confident the protests will be peaceful and take advantage of the national platform they will have. He said the coalition had to fight to get a march route that will be in sight and earshot of the convention, after Milwaukee’s Democratic leaders “completely sold us out, completely sold out the city and refused to listen to what any of the residents had to say.”

Clancy, the Democratic state representative, said he hoped having the convention in the city where he was born and raised would motivate liberals.

“I hope that having a critical mass of people in our city who hate us will be enough to mobilize folks for the primary in August and in November,” he said.