Charlotte reluctant host of the GOP convention

Most cities don’t want attention in age of Trump

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — As Americans fought in recent weeks over whether restaurants should refuse to serve top aides to President Donald Trump, an entire city has been debating what it means to host his convention for re-election.

The Queen City won the rights to the 2020 Republican National Convention on Friday. But that’s largely because Charlotte faced little serious competition. And even before the victory was announced in Austin, Texas, this thriving, progressive urban island in the Trump-friendly South was suffering some buyer’s remorse.

Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, a Democrat, says the decision to host the convention was the hardest she has tackled — “not just as a mayor but as a mom and as a friend” to her community.

To quell anger from her constituents, she has vowed that she will not deliver a welcome speech, a break from custom. Other local leaders are going further, promising to use the occasion to speak out against Trump.

“If it were Mitt Romney or ... anybody besides Donald Trump,” the debate would have been “much less heated,” said Larken Egleston, a Democratic council member.

The Republican Party’s difficulty in finding a host for the 2020 convention speaks both to the nation’s polarization in the Trump era and to the diminishing support for Republicans in cities that have the capacity to manage large-scale events. Even in Republicandominated states, big cities have grown more culturally diverse and Democratic, with many residents seeing themselves as targets of Trump’s anti-immigration measures, divisive racial rhetoric and social policy attacks.

Charlotte, a city where minorities are a majority, within a county that voted 62 percent for Hillary Clinton, is still nursing civic wounds from a police shooting of an AfricanAmerican man that provoked violent protests two years ago, and a fight with the state government over its limits on LGBTQ rights, a law that invited corporate boycotts. Now, this growing city is bracing for another two years of culture wars and security fears — and the potential to be ground zero for anti-Trump protests in the summer of 2020.

Charlotte has long been eager to boost its national image, with civic leaders bemoaning that some outsiders still confuse it with Charleston, S.C., and Charlottesville, Va. Even as the city now has two professional sports teams and successfully served as host to the 2012 Democratic National Convention, boosters see the Republican convention as another trophy that would solidify its place on the map.

But as the selection process dragged on, it became increasingly clear that other major cities had taken a pass.

During a contentious city council hearing last week, member Matt Newton, an opponent, complained that Charlotte led the competition “not because we stepped forward, but because everyone else stepped back.”

After Newton’s Democratic colleague Egleston cast what many perceived as the deciding vote to accept the convention, he faced an onslaught of angry emails and social media posts, along with threats of party primary challengers. Even so, Egleston said the city had to follow through after winning the competition or risk harming its reputation.

In retrospect, Egleston conceded, many council members failed to imagine that they might actually win the convention.

“If there was a time machine and people could go back and reconsider whether or not to bid, we might have said, ‘You know what, this is a highly charged time because of a president unlike any we’ve seen in our lifetimes,’ ” he said. “I can imagine people saying, ‘Let’s sit this one out and, you know, maybe we express an interest in 2024.’ ”

The 6-5 vote — on a council where Democrats have a 9-2 majority — cleared the way for Friday’s announcement by Republican leaders to formally award the bid.

By the time Republican officials made their choice, however, the only remaining competition came from Nevada’s Republican Party, whose bid came without support from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority or the city government. Other potential sites flamed out earlier, including San Antonio, which voted in May against bidding after public concerns that association with Trump would tarnish the predominantly Latino city’s image.

Ron Kaufman, the chairman of the party’s site selection committee, pronounced himself thrilled with the choice of Charlotte. Yet he conceded the nation’s political divide had hurt the process.

“God help this country if there’s a point in time where either party couldn’t go to any city,” he added.