The GOP and North Carolina are playing a bit of chicken over the 2020 convention. Simply, the GOP wants to be able to hold their convention as they see fit, with whatever health guidelines they want and don’t want. Given the COVID situation, North Carolina is unable to give those assurances at this time. But time is running out on the GOP’s ability to move the convention:

Republicans planning their party’s convention traded demands with North Carolina’s Democratic governor this week over holding the event in Charlotte in August, as President Trump pressures Democratic leaders in the state to allow him to host the kind of convention he wants despite concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.

The Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, and the president of the convention committee, Marcia Lee Kelly, wrote to Gov. Roy Cooper on Thursday, giving him a deadline of June 3 to approve safety measures to prevent the spread of the virus during the event. Continue Reading...

North Carolina secretary of Health and Human Services Mandy Cohen sent a letter to the head of the 2020 GOP Convention, basically saying, you want to be in Charlotte? What’s the plan?:

As we work together, it is important to have a written plan from you and your team as soon as possible for how you plan to approach the COVID-19 safety aspects of the convention. A written plan provides a necessary and valuable starting point to planning discussions with our public health teams at the county and state levels. …

We also discussed on Friday the need to plan for different levels of impact of COVID-19 so the RNC convention logistics could be tailored to the COVID-19 situation we find ourselves in at the end of August. As you know, North Carolina is now in Phase 2 of easing restrictions but this Saturday we saw our highest day of new lab confirmed COVID-19 cases in North Carolina. The status of COVID-19 infections in our state and in the Charlotte area continues to rapidly evolve, thus, it will be important to have several scenarios planned that can be deployed depending on the public health situation. Continue Reading...

First the Times reported on Thursday

Mr. Trump, who was heavily involved in the staging of his last nominating convention, has even shown a new openness to participating in a scaled-down event. He has mused aloud to several aides about why the convention can’t simply be held in a hotel ballroom in Florida, given all of the health concerns and the fact that Florida is further along in reopening portions of the state.

But with expensive contracts signed and money raised, the event is unlikely to move from Charlotte — unless the Democratic mayor and governor there say it can’t be held. Continue Reading...