RNC delegates meeting in Charlotte map out what Trump has to do to win
As they prepare to renominate President Donald Trump on Monday morning in Charlotte, Republican delegates from around the country sound bullish about his chances of winning a second term even as polls suggest Democratic challenger Joe Biden is leading nationally and in several battleground states.
Pollsters didn’t give Trump much of a chance four years ago, either, said Florida delegate Peter Feaman. “So if 2016 is any indication,” he said, “I don’t put a lot of credibility in polls.”
Michigan delegate Kathy Berden agreed: “I think this is like 2016 all over again. There’s a silent majority (voting) for our president again. . . . (He) just needs to keep on doing what he’s doing.”
South Carolina delegate Glenn McCall of Rock Hill put it this way: “When we talk to people on the ground, we are seeing a grassroots swell for him. A lot of people won’t talk to pollsters.”
The Observer interviewed 14 delegates from eight states about what Trump and his GOP convention need to do this week to propel the Trump-Pence ticket during these final months of the campaign.
Michael Whatley, state party chairman in North Carolina, a battleground state that Trump won in 2016, said the focus has to be on what the president has accomplished in the past four years —and what he’d do in the next four. Whatley will deliver the speech nominating Trump on Monday.
“He needs to make sure that everybody understands all the work that he (has) done . . . to build the U.S. economy, rebuild the military, put America first,” Whatley said. “And talk about how strong the economy was before the virus hit and what we’re going to do to get through the coronavirus, both medically and economically, and lead the country forward.”
Added Wyoming delegate Marti Halverson: Trump needs to “be himself.”
“That’s why the grassroots elected him,” she said. “He’s not a swamp creature. He’s a real person with real world experience. He has to be the Donald Trump that won the grassroots in 2016.”
In no state did Trump do better in 2016 than in Wyoming, where he got almost 70% of the vote. “We’re shooting for 80% this year,” Halverson said.
Trump’s handling of coronavirus
During the Democrats’ virtual convention last week, Biden and scores of others offered harsh assessments of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, charging that he has had no plan, didn’t listen to his medical advisers, promoted crackpot remedies, and urged governors to re-open their state economies too soon. As a result, one Democrat after another said last week, the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States have been much higher than in other countries.
In response, the GOP delegates interviewed echoed Trump, blaming China for lying about the virus in the beginning and crediting the president for imposing early travel bans on China and Europe.
“That’s something we got from China — something the Democrats refuse to acknowledge,” said Colorado delegate Vera Ortegon, a microbiologist by profession. “We have to respect (the danger posed by the virus). But we cannot be in lock-down the rest of our lives.”
Feaman, a lawyer from West Palm Beach, Fla., who got the virus and has recovered, argued that Trump was right not to impose a national plan to combat the virus.
“He understands that not all states are the same,” Feaman said. “That’s exactly what the (U.S.) Constitution says. He understands federalism. In Florida, we had our surge. But high school football is back. That’s a good sign.”
Instead of playing defense on the pandemic, the delegates interviewed said the Republican convention — which, unlike the Democrats’ gathering, will include live speeches and in-person audiences — should mostly try to contrast “Biden’s America against Trump’s America,” in the words of South Carolina delegate Cindy Costa.
“The Democrats are so divisive and pessimistic. We want optimism, we don’t want more division,” she said. “Democrats are trying to divide us between black and white, rich and poor.”
On the DNC, she said, “I think they trotted out the same tired playbook of over-promise and under-deliver.” She did concede that Biden, whom Trump and other Republicans have portrayed as a doddering old man not up to the job, surpassed expectations. “He read well,” she said. “He can read.”
Attacking Biden
Other GOP delegates meeting in Charlotte said their convention speakers should go after Biden and the Democrats this week over how their stands would affect the economy and law and order.
Again echoing Trump, they argued that a President Biden would open the door to socialism in the United States by embracing the Green New Deal, Medicare for All and efforts to “Defund the police.”
Biden has not endorsed any of those programs, but the GOP delegates said he will if elected.
“The left has taken over the Democratic Party,” said Arizona delegate Lori Klein Corbin. “We have cities burning down.”
Ortegon called the Democrats’ agenda “radical . . . We (Republicans) want to make sure law and order is protected and well-funded.”
N.C. GOP Chairman Whatley said Trump should let his surrogates lead the chorus of criticism of Biden this week so the president can brag on his record and detail his plans for the future.
“I think the rest of the convention can really focus on Joe and the radical agenda that he’s adopted, that he’s going to be pushing forward,” Whatley said. “But I really think that the president needs to focus on (himself) and needs to focus on his accomplishments and his vision going forward.”
The delegates said Trump can rightly crow about “bringing this country economic health,” as Corbin put it. “By cutting taxes and getting rid of so many regulations, he spurred the economy.”
Democrats’ response
Tennessee delegate Beth Campbell agreed that Trump’s best strategy is to run on his record: “I think you have to look at the accomplishments and the policies that he’s instituted that he’d help fulfill over the next four years,” she said.
But, Democrats point out, the economy is now in dire shape, with the unemployment rate at 10 percent.
Two former Democratic governors of North Carolina — Jim Hunt and Bev Perdue — will join former Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx and other N.C. Democrats in lining up to give daily rebuttals to the GOP convention. They’ll tackle daily themes including health care, the economy and families.
“The message going into the Republican convention is Donald Trump’s presidency is the chaos presidency,” said state Democratic Chair Wayne Goodwin. “And working families are paying the price with their livelihoods and their lives.”
The 2020 Republican National Convention will start at 9 a.m. Monday, when 336 Republican delegates — six from each state and territory — will gather in a ballroom at the Charlotte Convention Center for an in-person and traditional roll call of the states. S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster is expected to cast his state’s votes for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. And as chairman of the N.C. delegation, Union County’s John Steward will deliver the Tar Heel State’s roll call votes. He’ll be dressed for the occasion: wearing a black and white sport coat adorned with images of Trump.
President Trump is expected to stop in Charlotte around noon Monday to thank the delegates. Trump is also scheduled to make an afternoon visit to a Farmers to Families Food Box program site in Mills River, N.C. with his daughter Ivanka Trump and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.
Pandemic makes uptown Charlotte sleepy
Many delegates arrived in Charlotte as the weekend began.
“Last night, I had a good burger, but there’s almost nothing open,” said Florida’s Feaman. “The (public health) controls are much stricter in North Carolina than they are in Florida.”
North Carolina delegate Ada Fisher, who lives in Salisbury, said the COVID-19 virus has turned the uptown Charlotte portion of the RNC into a low-key affair.
”I had hoped that we would have a bigger presence than we (have) had in Charlotte,” Fisher said. “The city seems deserted.”
Protesters have gathered uptown the past several nights, chanting “No RNC for CLT.”
The Republican delegates had a few options for merriment over the weekend. They were be able to sign up for a list of “Charlotte at Dusk” activities, including TopGolf, the Hoppin’ Taproom, Middle C Jazz, and a private tour of the Billy Graham Library.
“Obviously this year it’s smaller. But that doesn’t diminish the enthusiasm,” said South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Drew McKissick of Columbia. So far, he said over the weekend, there’s been “nothing out of the ordinary at the convention.” Except that the GOP is simply re-adopting its 2016 platform.
McKissick, dressed in a seersucker suit, saw the convention as a way for the party to show its focus on policy — he said that the DNC was too personality-oriented. “Policy is what drives people out, mobilizing them. Policy wins elections.”
On the economy, McKissick added, voters “see the jobs coming back and they credit that to the president. (He) helped deliver the most successful economy in history before March.”
Just up the block on Tryon Street from where the delegates are staying, there is now a Black Lives Matter mural, which S.C. delegate Costa said she wasn’t going to see, in part because she considers BLM a “Marxist” group “that wants to destroy the traditional family, which is the bedrock of this country.”
That may not sound like the kind of optimism and unity she and other Republicans say they want to convey at their convention this week. But Costa’s views on the culture wars is likely to be echoed all week: Among the speakers scheduled for the convention are a Missouri couple who confronted Black Lives Matter protesters in their city with guns.
Among the speakers the Trump campaign says will speak during the four-night convention: U.S. Sen. Tim Scott and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, both of South Carolina, as well as evangelist Franklin Graham, civil rights pioneer Clarence Henderson, and Eleventh District congressional candidate Madison Cawthorn, all of North Carolina.
Francesca Chambers of McClatchy’s Washington Bureau contributed.
This story was originally published August 23, 2020 at 1:08 PM with the headline "RNC delegates meeting in Charlotte map out what Trump has to do to win."
