Charlotte in N.C. gets GOP’s ’20 fest

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The GOP's national committee Friday selected North Carolina's largest city over Las Vegas to host the 2020 Republican National Convention.

The Republican National Committee finalized its convention site, Charlotte, as it picked an East Coast swing state over Las Vegas, the only other finalist. The vote came as hundreds of Republican activists gathered in Texas for the Republicans' summer meeting.

The pick ensures that tens of thousands of political activists, protesters and journalists will converge on Charlotte in the summer of 2020. The same city hosted the national Democratic convention in 2012.

"The city that I represent has truly established its place on the national stage, and I want to thank you again for the opportunity to showcase our city and showing the world how special we are," said Mayor Vi Lyles, Charlotte's first black female mayor. "We're a growing center of diversity and inclusiveness in the New South, and we're going to show you the true meaning of Southern hospitality."

Earlier in the week, a divided Charlotte City Council narrowly approved a bid to welcome the convention.

Lyles led the campaign to draw the convention to Charlotte and said in a newspaper column that it would be a chance for the city to show its inclusiveness. At a public hearing Monday, more than 100 residents spoke for and against the proposed bid. The City Council voted 6-5 to extend the bid, and Lyles emphasized that the vote wasn't an endorsement of President Donald Trump.

"I'm going to call for unity," Lyles said after Monday's vote. "Unity doesn't come easily. It comes with hard work, and we're trying our best to make that happen."

Throughout the City Council meeting, opponents of the bid said the convention would put Charlotte residents at risk.

"I do not believe that something like '68 is going to happen in Charlotte," said Larry Shaheen, a Charlotte Republican consultant, referring to the violence at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, where Vietnam War protesters fought police in the streets.

Given recent events in the city, he said, it would be wise for Charlotte convention organizers to begin building civic unity now for the event despite political divisions to avoid a spark "fanning into the flame."

In North Carolina, Republicans will lavish money and attention on a swing state that backed President Barack Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2016..

A Section on 07/21/2018

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