Houston authorities have intervened to force the cancellation of an in-person convention of the Texas Republican Party which was set to take place in the city next week. The event has been shut down amidst a dramatic rise in Coronavirus cases in the area. On Wednesday alone, the state of Texas reported over 10,000 cases and over 121 deaths, according to one count. The convention cancellation was driven by Mayor Sylvester Turner (D), who explained that the event would have posed a “clear and present danger” to the inhabitants of Houston and the people in the communities that the convention attendees would have come from and gone back to.
Specifically, Turner says that he issued a demand for the Houston First Corporation, which owns the convention center where the convention was set to take place, to cancel the convention, a move which was apparently actually specifically allowed by contracts. The convention would have been a gathering of about 6,000 people.
Turner commented:
‘[The] Houston health department has done everything they could to try and outline a series of things that could be done to make it safer but then came to the conclusion that even if you did all of those things, it still would not prevent this convention from being a clear and present danger to the employees, to the delegates, to the people in Houston, to the cities and towns from which they come. After all of that, if you still refuse to recognize the public danger to everyone involved, then I am still the mayor.’
The Republican Party of Texas has already vehemently complained about the decision to shut down their convention. State Party Chairman James Dickey implied that there was some kind of political animus underlining the decision, but there’s flatly no evidence of this. Right now, the situation is actively worsening in Houston, no matter what protests were allowed to take place days or weeks in the past.
Dickey said that the party was considering legal options, and he complained:
‘After allowing tens of thousands of protestors to peaceably assemble in the same city, in the same area, without any of the safety precautions and measures we have taken, he is seeking to deny a political Party’s critical electoral function that should be equally protected under the constitution.’
Mayor Turner, seemingly responding to the complaints, pointed out that an outdoor protest was fundamentally different from an indoor event with thousands of people.
It is one thing to be talking about an indoor convention where people are in close proximity with each other for a substantial amount of time rather than walking outside in a protest. When people are marching and protesting, no one is making lunch/dinner, cleaning up behind them.
— Sylvester Turner (@SylvesterTurner) July 8, 2020
Some Republicans haven’t gotten the message — the national GOP is still planning an in-person convention for Jacksonville, Florida, although they have planned so-called precautions like daily Coronavirus tests for all attendees.
