How the Republican convention created money woes for the GOP in two cities
WASHINGTON — The abrupt uprooting of the Republican National Convention from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Jacksonville, Florida, has created a tangled financial predicament for party officials as they effectively try to pay for two big events instead of one.
“I don’t want to encourage people getting sick,” said Stanley S. Hubbard, a Minnesota billionaire who has donated more than $2 million to help Republicans, including President Donald Trump, since the beginning of the 2016 election. But the virus has proved a debilitating impediment for Jacksonville. Florida had recorded almost 180,000 total coronavirus cases through Friday, but the surge in the last month has been dramatic. After reporting 667 new cases on June 1, the state has had more than 5,000 every day since June 24, including more than 10,000 Thursday. Hospitals across the state have started to sound the alarm about becoming overburdened.
By the time Trump decided to move the convention, almost all of the money raised by the Charlotte host committee had been spent on things like salaries, insurance, prepayments on contracts and other expenses. And Republican officials compared the mad cash dash to a special election, when a condensed time frame creates anxiety, but ultimately the money comes through.
“There’s deep frustration,” said Tariq Bokhari, a Republican City Council member in Charlotte, describing exasperation among prominent local donors. “There are people who’ve put hundreds of thousands if not millions into this. They care that their investment comes to fruition, that our city hosts a major convention and our businesses and hospitality workers get the benefits.”
In 2016, organizers of the Republican convention in Cleveland spent more than $1 million on national fundraising consultants as they sought to hit their donation goals; they wound up raising about $60 million. Indeed, when Jacksonville was selected as the host city for the convention in June, the news was seen by leaders there as a huge financial shot in the arm for a second-tier city that would never have been considered for such a role under normal circumstances. The average economic impact of hosting a convention for the local economy is about $200 million, and officials in Jacksonville initially estimated that even a hurried version of the Republican event would bring in at least half of that.
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