Kansas City, Mo. ? Two civil rights organizations have threatened to pull their national conventions from Kansas City because a woman who is a member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps was appointed to the city’s parks board.

But now, stepping into that convention breach is the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps itself, which has announced plans to hold a convention in Kansas City in December.

The National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest Hispanic advocacy group, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People have said they are considering canceling conventions in Kansas City because of Frances Semler’s appointment in June to the Kansas City Parks and Recreation Board.

Semler, 73, is a member of the local chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, an Arizona-based group that patrols the Mexico border looking for illegal immigrants.

“I heard a lot of suggestions about if La Raza and NAACP were going to cancel, then the Minuteman should have their convention here,” Kansas Minuteman director Ed Hayes said Friday. “Since everybody is pulling out, we’re going to come in.”

The NAACP’s weeklong national event in 2010 is expected to bring in 10,000 visitors and $9 million, while La Raza’s four-day convention in 2009 could mean about $5.5 million and 4,000 visitors for the area.

The Minuteman convention, tentatively scheduled for the first week in December, would likely bring in considerably fewer people and dollars. Hayes said Friday that the convention was still being organized and it was unclear if it would be national or local. He also did not have a location or an estimate of how much money the convention would mean for the city.

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps has about 9,500 members in 80 nationwide chapters, Hayes said. Last year, a Kansas City meeting of chapters from the region was attended by 150 members.

Calls to Mayor Mark Funkhouser on Friday seeking comment about the Minuteman announcement were not immediately returned.

Bit Funkhouser has stood by Semler, 73, saying the “same five-member board that includes Ms. Semler also includes two African-Americans and a Hispanic board president.”

He also has said he would not ask Semler to resign because “if I’m going to champion diversity, I’ve got to defend diversity of opinion and political thinking along with ethnicity. I won’t abandon that principle because the city might lose a convention.”

La Raza President Janet Murguia said her group maintains its position to pull its national conference from Kansas City at a cost to La Raza of about $70,000.

“We see the Minutemen as an extremist group that espouses hate and vigilanteism and some violence,” Murguia said Wednesday. “A member of such a group, no matter how upstanding in other ways, should have no place representing Kansas City.”

Hayes, a retired captain from the Johnson County, Kan., Sheriff’s Department, said the meeting could help dispel what he considered misperceptions about the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

“Some of the things that have been said are just lunacy,” Hayes said. “We are American patriots. You would never meet a finer bunch of people. … We are for the rule of law and securing our nation. What’s wrong with that?”