Trump May Be Stuck With North Carolina Convention After All
Moving Republican Convention Now Would Be a Worst-Case Scenario
(Bloomberg) -- Republicans would only move their presidential nominating convention from North Carolina as a worst-case scenario, despite President Donald Trump’s threats to do so if they can’t guarantee a big celebration, people familiar with the negotiations said Tuesday.
Trump is pressing Democratic North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper to decide how many people can come to the Aug. 24-27 convention, so that the campaign can decide if it can live with those limits or quickly put together a new plan in a state with a Republican governor, a person familiar with the negotiations said.
“We have to know when the people come down, the doors are going to be open,” Trump said Tuesday at a Rose Garden event. “Now, if the governor can’t tell us very soon, unfortunately we’ll have no choice” but to consider moving the convention. “I would say within a week, that’s certainly - we have to know. If he can’t do it, if he feels that he’s not going to do it, all he has to do is tell us and then we’ll have to pick another location. And I will tell you a lot of locations want it.”
Three people familiar with the discussions also said any talk of moving to a new site is a worst-case scenario, and although there have been conversations about an alternate site, no other location has been identified.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters Tuesday that Trump “wants to see this convention take place and sees no reason not to as the nation begins to reopen.” She also noted that the president wants to work on the convention with “a cooperative governor.”
A massive undertaking
Holding a presidential nominating convention in a normal year is a massive undertaking years in the making. Given that even states friendly to the idea of hosting the GOP convention are still limiting gatherings to 10 people, moving the 50,000 delegates, staff, security, press and hangers on to a new site would be nearly impossible.
Trump tweeted Monday that if officials could not guarantee that Charlotte’s Spectrum Center could be fully occupied, “we will be reluctantly forced to find, with all of the jobs and economic development it brings, another Republican National Convention site.”
Cooper responded on Tuesday. “It’s okay for political conventions to be political, but pandemic response cannot be.”
Vice President Mike Pence has floated Florida, Georgia and Texas as alternatives, while Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a Trump ally, tweeted that the state would welcome him.
Not so fast, said Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, echoing what many Democratic mayors in Republican states are indicating.
Lance Bottoms, a Democrat, said Tuesday that the city is following a “data-driven approach” to reopening, using recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control.
“That plan does not contemplate hosting a large gathering event in August,” she said in a statement. “In fact, several long-standing city-supported and sponsored events have already been canceled in order to comply with CDC guidelines.”
GOP Governor Ron DeSantis said Florida would welcome the RNC -- even the DNC -- if hosting could be done in accordance with safety guidelines.
“Florida would love to have the RNC,” he told reporters Tuesday. “Heck I am a Republican -- it would be good to have the DNC in terms of the economic impact.”
A panel of the Democratic National Committee has already voted to allow delegates to vote for their nominee remotely and is exploring options to make the convention beginning Aug. 17 in Milwaukee smaller, or entirely virtual.
Indoor gatherings of more than 10 people remain barred in North Carolina until at least late June, and Cooper has not indicated how many people might be allowed to congregate by August or whether he would grant a waiver to the RNC for the convention.
The state’s health secretary, Mandy Cohen, has written to the RNC asking for a written safety plan and has asked for “several scenarios” depending on the severity of the outbreak in late August.
And it seems the residents of Charlotte aren’t thrilled about the idea of tens thousands of people descending on their city during a pandemic.
City residents nervous about large gatherings
Charlotte City Council member Dimple Ajmera said her constituents were nervous about the gathering.
“The emails that we have been receiving where our residents have said it would be absurd to host the convention in August almost three months from today and have 50,000 people right here in our city,” Ajmera said. “Some of us have had safety concerns from day one in 2018 when we first had to vote on whether or not to hold it.”
Officials in North Carolina have a lot of power to limit such gatherings. The public health director can call for isolation of the county or to quarantine.
“No one is saying we are going to arbitrarily shut down the county,” Mecklenburg County Commissioner Mark Jerrell said. “This has nothing to do with politics; safety is our primary concern as elected officials and safety takes a lot of forms.”
Trump has little leverage to change the contract now, anyway. A copy of the 94-page contract between Charlotte, Mecklenburg County and the RNC obtained by Bloomberg News shows two clauses that guarantee the city and Mecklenburg County the right to respond to public safety problems.
Chris Strianese, a Charlotte lawyer who has studied the contract, said that the city and county could meet their obligations by giving the RNC access to the site but saying that it needs to meet any public health requirements limiting crowds set by the governor.
“The city and the county clearly have the upper hand here,” he said.
Trump may not have much leverage politically, either. Cooper has a 65% approval rating compared to Trump’s 48% in the state, according to a poll for a conservative group, Partnership for Carolina Reform. Cooper’s approval rating for his handling of the coronavirus outbreak alone is 76% to Trump’s 51%.
“If Trump wants to move the RNC, he’s free to do so, bye!” tweeted Councilmember Malcolm Graham Sunday.
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