Several Republican Senators have said they will not attend next month’s Republican National Convention in Jacksonville Florida, owing to a variety of reasons.
Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have all said that they will not attend the GOP convention, as reported by The Hill.
Collins said she will not attend the National Convention because she is up for reelection. This year, Collins is in a race that could determine which party takes control of the Senate majority in the next term.
Romney, Grassley, and Murkowski’s office did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times to confirm their reasons for not attending.
Sens. Romney and Murkowski have had clashes with President Trump; Sen. Murkowski was against Obamacare’s repeal and the nomination of Supreme Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Sen. Romney voted to impeach Trump.
The three GOP senators are the latest Republican lawmakers to say that they do not plan to attend the convention in August.
“I’m not going to go. And I’m not going to go because of the virus situation,” Grassley told The Des Moines Register and others.
A Republican who is retiring this year, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), also said Tuesday that he would not attend the National Convention.
“Senator Alexander is an honorary chair of the Tennessee Trump campaign, but he will not be attending the convention because he believes the delegate spots should be reserved for those who have not had that privilege before as he has had,” the statement said.
Republicans changed the venue of their convention due to concerns from the North Carolina Governor about social distancing during the pandemic.
The convention’s new location, Florida has been seeing an increase in its number of CCP virus cases over the last couple of months. According to the Florida Department of Health, “On July 6, 16.27 percent of new cases tested positive and there are a total of 213,794 Florida cases, with 3,841 total deaths related to the CCP virus.
Many other GOP senators have indicated that they plan on attending the event, barring any changes to the guidelines set by the CDC.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told reporters in early July that he hadn’t yet made a decision on whether he was attending the convention.
“Yeah current state of affairs and exactly what my role would be and whether I’d really have any use or not, and what kind of social distancing, what kind of precautions are being taken,” Johnson told the TV station.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) told Ohio reporters last month that he wanted to decide closer to the date of the convention. “We’ll see where we are in late August,” Portman said. “If I go, I’m going to go taking precautions.”
Meanwhile, some spokespeople have confirmed their senator is attending, including Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Mitch McConnell (R-Ala.), and Mike Braun (R-Ind.).
Braun wrote in a tweet on July 7, “I campaigned with President Trump in 2018, where he helped expand our Senate majority- and touted his policies to Make America Great Again. I’ll be at the @GOPcovention in Jacksonville with @realDonaldTrump where we will kick off the 2020 campaign to #KeepAmericaGreat!”
