JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — On July 18, 2018, the Republican National Convention’s site selection committee voted unanimously to recommend holding the 2020 convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. Less than two years later, the majority of the convention is moving south to Jacksonville, Florida amid concerns over COVID-19.
“When you look at the city of Jacksonville, we have a very friendly mayor with Lenny Curry, former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida as well as Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis,” said Christian Ziegler, the Vice Chairman of the Florida GOP. “Florida is the most important political state in the entire county when it comes to the presidential election. You can’t win the presidency without winning Florida, so this was a collaborative effort.”
Read: What a second wave of COVID-19 cases could look like in Florida
But there will be challenges. Not only does the GOP have little more than two months to make preparations, the party is also headed to a city that, as the NFL discovered in Super Bowl 1995, doesn’t have a lot of hotel rooms.
According to industry records, Jacksonville has only 14,059 rooms. Compare that to Charlotte, North Carolina, which has 27,197 rooms; Cleveland, Ohio which has 39,423 rooms and Orlando, which has 74,273 rooms.
“There are plenty of cities around Jacksonville that we can leverage and have people stay in, so we’ll figure those details out,” Ziegler said.
Not all of the convention will be coming to Florida. The party said it will still conduct the official business of the national convention in Charlotte, but the more visible parts will take part at Jacksonville’s VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena.
In an interview on Fox News Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the RNC said, “We are obviously going to put safety checks in place to make sure the convention-goers are safe, but we are going to have a packed arena.”
The size of the gathering, expected to be about 20,000 people, is what caused North Carolina to ask for limitations on gatherings, and it’s unclear if Florida will request similar restrictions.
“A report came out yesterday afternoon that we are seeing record spikes in COVID-109 cases, and if you’re the governor, that is something that you have to be concerned about,” said Tallahassee-based GOP consultant Jacob Perry. “I think what is happening is that politics is, as is often the case, politics is trumping public health concerns.”
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