Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, affirms that the committee “will not be holding a virtual convention,” despite the ongoing pandemic.
“It’s quite a ways away, and there’s ample time for us to adjust, if necessary,” McDaniel told reporters on Monday, according to the Associated Press. But when asked about the Minnesota Republican Party, whose online convention may have been hacked, McDaniel said, “We will not be holding a virtual convention.”
The convention is scheduled to take place Aug. 24-27 in Charlotte, North Carolina. On Saturday, with 100 days left until the start of the convention, the RNC said in a press release that it is expecting to have “nearly 50,000 visitors.”
In an op-ed published that same day, the RNC’s Committee on Arrangements president and CEO Marcia Lee Kelly said that Dr. Jeffrey W. Runge, a former chief medical officer for the Department of Homeland Security, had joined the convention team to help plan for the event.
“While safety remains our top priority for our team as we move forward in planning, we are also hard at work on all other aspects of convention and have made incredible progress in key convention priorities including: arena design, stage programming and event line up,” Kelly wrote. “We are committed to safely figuring out how we can do our part in reopening America by energizing the local North and South Carolina economy.”