Trump Scraps Big Republican Convention in Florida as Virus Rages
Trump’s biggest re-election event in Florida has been cancelled.
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump relented Thursday to worries about the coronavirus and canceled his Florida nominating convention, the biggest event of his re-election campaign, as the host state posted record deaths from the pandemic.
“I told my team it’s time to cancel the Jacksonville, Florida, component of the GOP convention,” Trump said Thursday at the White House. “We didn’t want to take any chances.”
Trump had insisted for months that he would still hold his multi-day extravaganza despite worries that the gathering would become a super-spreader event. The party decided June 11 to move most of the convention to Jacksonville from Charlotte after North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper refused to waive social-distancing and other measures to prevent contagion.
But just as preparations for the Florida event got underway, the state was hit with a surge of infections and now is one of the country’s hardest-hit areas, with a total so far of 389,868 confirmed cases of the virus — about 1.8% of the state’s population — and the number growing by an average of more than 10,000 cases a day. The state posted a record 173 deaths on Thursday.
Although Trump plans to deliver a speech accepting the nomination, a Republican official familiar with convention planning said there would be no events in Jacksonville. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said members of the Republican National Committee would meet briefly in Charlotte to conduct offical business such as the vote to nominate Trump.
With support plunging in public opinion polls over his handling of the virus, Trump appeared to start over this week, offering daily news conferences where he encouraged people to wear masks after disdaining them for months, and acknowledging the seriousness of the virus after minimizing its impact.
“We’re setting an example,” Trump said of the decision to cancel the convention in an interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity on Thursday night. “I thought I had an obligation not to have large numbers, massive numbers of people crowded into a room.”
A Quinnipiac poll of Florida voters released Thursday showed him running 13 points behind Joe Biden.
Yet Trump, who thrives on the large crowds that attend his rallies, was clearly looking forward to an event that would give his campaign a jolt of enthusiasm.
He tried that with a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June, his only one so far since the pandemic began in March. The event was only filled to about one-third of capacity and numerous people, including state officials, became ill.
Democrats scaled back their convention in Milwaukee earlier this summer, dispensing with the full pageantry and celebration that normally marks the nomination of a presidential candidate. The Democratic National Committee is allowing delegates to vote remotely and most of the speeches, except for the acceptance speech for Biden, will be livestreamed. Biden will speak in Milwaukee but before a limited audience.
“Unlike Trump, we followed the science, listened to doctors and public health experts, and worked through plans to protect lives,” DNC Chair Tom Perez said in a statement after Trump’s announcement. “That’s how we made the decision to hold a responsible convention that will bring our country together, ensure our delegates can take care of official business without risk to public health, and still shine a spotlight on our host community of Milwaukee.”
The Republicans, urged on by Trump, had persisted in planning a full convention right up until Trump’s announcement at his daily coronavirus briefing on Thursday.
He offered few details of how the GOP virtual event would work, except to say there would be a “reasonably quick meeting in North Carolina.”
“I’ll still do a convention speech in a different form but we won’t do a big crowded convention per se,”he said.
Local officials in the Republican-led city applauded the decision.
“We appreciate President Donald Trump considering our public health and safety concerns in making this incredibly difficult decision,” Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry and Sheriff Mike Williams said in a statement on Twitter.
“While this was not the outcome we were hoping for, we know that President Trump made this decision with the knowledge that he was doing what is best for the people of Jacksonville,” Dean Black, chairman of the Republican Party of Duval County, which includes Jacksonville, said on Twitter.
When Trump made the decision to move the convention in early June, Florida’s rate of coronavirus infections was well below the national average. But the rate spiked as beaches and Disney resorts started to reopen, fueled in part by growing infections in younger patients.
As recently as two weeks ago, the White House denied there were any second thoughts about holding a convention. “No, we’re still moving forward with Jacksonville,” said press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. “It’ll be a safe event. It will be a good event. And it will be up to the RNC as to how those details are hashed out.”
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