The Republican National Committee will abide by the health orders issued in Jacksonville, Florida during the upcoming GOP convention, even if a mandatory mask order remains in place that could thwart some hopes of having a more open event than had been offered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Chairman Ronna McDaniel said Tuesday.
"The difference with Charlotte is the governor would give us no guidance, so we kept continually coming to him and saying we will test people, we will do this and that, and he said I'm not going to give you any guidance," said McDaniel on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "In Florida, it's not about politics, it's about health and safety and how do we do this event?"
McDaniel said that for the convention, "we're going to test everybody. We're going to have temperature checks. We're going to sanitize. We can do this in a safe way and not let politics get in the way, which, unfortunately, which is what was happening in North Carolina."
Part of the convention will remain in Charlotte, but for the most part, the major part of the event, including President Donald Trump's nomination speech, will be in Jacksonville, after North Carolina's Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper could not guarantee strict coronavirus restrictions would not be in place.
McDaniel said protective equipment will be provided, and all steps will be taken to keep the convention safe and healthy.
"The difference in Florida is they want to make it happen," said McDaniel. "Cooper wouldn't work with us at all. He wouldn't give us guidelines and it just wouldn't have been fair to fly thousands of people into a city where at that point only 10 people were allowed into any given building."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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