Gov. Greg Abbott and state Republican leaders are on the horns of a dilemma.
Having a big in-person Republican State Convention the week after next in Houston, the epicenter of a resurgent coronavirus pandemic, at a time when the governor in increasingly blunt and urgent terms is imploring Texans to hunker down, seems like a politically fraught idea.
But for it not to happen would require either the State Republican Executive Committee or the governor to bite the bullet — and maybe take a political bullet from some grassroots activists who have questioned the severity of the crisis.
State Republican Party Chairman James Dickey has called a special, virtual meeting of the 64-member executive committee to vote on whether to change an expected 6,000-person event July 16-18 at Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center into a virtual gathering.
While the committee members tend to hew to a more conservative grassroots sentiment and live for the in-person interaction of the biennial state convention, they are actively polling delegates from their respective districts for guidance.
“I strongly believe in-person is best,” said Mark Ramsey, an influential conservative member who represents Senate District 7. “My constituents seem to be 10-to-1 or more for in person.”
Ramsey, who chaired the Platform Committee at the 2018 convention, is leading the Legislative Priorities Committee this year.
“I am receiving a lot of feedback from delegates in and out of my Senate district, and it is very close,” said JT Edwards, who represents Senate District 11 and intends to be guided by that feedback.
“It’s really close. You think it’s going one way and then it goes the other. You got all these X factors out of your control, which is frustrating,” Edwards said. “To be candid with you, there really is not a right answer to the COVID. We don’t know if the situation on the ground is going to change three minutes from now, 30 minutes from now or three hours from now. We simply don’t know.”
“Not to be cliche, but this is a decision for the ages,” Edwards said. “Does the Republican Party step into the 21st century or does it not?”
On Tuesday, the Texas Medical Association called on the state party to cancel the live convention in Houston.
On Wednesday, Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa piled on, “Neither the vanity of hosting an in-person convention nor the lack of skill to host a modern virtual experience are reason enough to put Houston workers and their families at risk,” he said.
Texas Democrats switched their convention from San Antonio in the first week of June to a virtual convention, though their hand was also forced by local officials telling them they couldn’t gather in San Antonio as planned.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, a Democrat, has indicated that he does not intend to step in to stop Texas Republicans from meeting, saying it is up to the GOP to do it safely.
On June 16, when Abbott was asked at a COVID-19 briefing about whether an in-person GOP state convention was still a good idea, he said the same methodology used for stadiums would apply. “There is the ability to have people gather as long as safe protocols are used,” he said.
But the contagion has spiked dangerously since then, with each day bringing record numbers of new coronavirus cases, and the governor has imposed tighter restrictions on outdoor gatherings, closed bars, scaled back restaurant patronage and told Texans to stay at home if at all possible.
While his office did not have any comment Wednesday on whether Abbott would step in to stop the Houston convention if the state party did not, he would seem politically hard-pressed to let it proceed under the current circumstance, let alone speak at the event.
As a practical matter, it might be better for the party if the governor issued an order that effectively prohibited the gathering because the party would be less financially liable if it had to cancel by force of law and not of its own volition.
“As the South By Southwest organizers needed a governmental order to be able to be trigger their insurance protections to be able to get out a bunch of contracts without significant additional costs, the same would apply to any other event, including ours,” Dickey said.
But Dickey, who said he had not been in touch with the governor or his people on the matter in recent days, said he was not asking Abbott to make a decision for that reason, nor did he think Abbott would make a decision on that basis.
“I am quite certain that the governor makes any decisions around this pandemic with a sole focus on the health and recovery of Texas,” Dickey said.
Dickey said he will leave the decision to the executive committee without making his own recommendation, adding that he believes the choice will not be based on financial considerations.
“It is not relevant,” he said. “The question is what is best for the election process that we have to fulfill and the safety for our fellow Texans.”
Summer Wise, who represents Senate District 24, said in polling the 300 delegates in her district, “There are some who are saying, `I am not going to go unless I’m not forced to wear a mask,’ and then there are others who are saying, `I don’t think I can be there because of my health,’ and then there are others who say, `I don’t think anyone should be there.’ So you’ve got the whole spectrum.”
Wise said she has not made up her mind how she will vote Thursday.
“I’m still surveying everyone,” she said. “The one thing I will say is that one option accommodates all of my delegates, and the other option is one that a segment of my delegates would not be able to participate. That’s some feedback that I’m definitely taking into consideration.”
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If Texas GOP doesn’t cancel its Houston convention, will Abbott do it for them? - El Paso Times
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