Near the middle of Monday’s roll call vote, it was Georgia’s time in the spotlight.
With a shoutout to the state’s two most prominent Republicans, Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer officially submitted the state’s delegate votes to support President Donald Trump.
“From the Golden Isles to the top of Lookout Mountain, the great state of Georgia — home to Gov. Brian Kemp and our senior United States senator, David Perdue — is proud to cast every single one of its 76 votes for the renomination of President Donald J. Trump,” Shafer said.
(It didn’t go unnoticed in Georgia GOP circles that Shafer sidestepped mention of U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler and her rival, U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, both Republicans in a bitter election contest.)
Shafer’s brief remarks in the roll call of states helped kick off a Republican National Convention that so far is devoid of many Georgia voices. As of Monday, the only Georgian slated to speak during prime-time programming was state Rep. Vernon Jones, a Democrat who endorsed Trump earlier this year.
Contingents from the U.S. states and territories cast their votes in alphabetical order except for Florida, which was granted permission to wait until later when its delegates could boast they were the ones who put Trump over the threshold needed to officially secure the party’s nomination.
Trump has a slim path to victory if he doesn’t carry both Georgia and Florida, which he considers his home state.
President, Sonny Perdue check out food box program
After President Donald Trump spoke Monday at the convention, he stuck around North Carolina a bit longer to join Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on a tour of a vegetable-growing operation that’s part of the administration’s Farmers to Families Food Box program.
Trump and Perdue, a former Georgia governor, toured the Flavor 1st Growers and Packers farm in Mills River, where the president announced $1 billion to expand the program. It’s designed to provide families struggling with the coronavirus with healthy food.
At the event, Perdue said the U.S. Department of Agriculture scrambled to put the program together to help farmers, packers and families prosper during the pandemic. He said voters want a “decider in chief.”
“I love your speed, Mr. President. You’re a man with a business speed, not a government speed,” Perdue said. “And I figure if I want to continue working for you, I’d better get a business speed, too.”
GOP backs Columbus, targets ‘Chinese monopoly’
Aside from renominating President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, the Republicans gathered in Charlotte took care of some other formal business. David Shafer, the Georgia GOP chairman, provided a glimpse of the agenda on social media.
The series of resolutions adopted by Republicans included a pledge to uphold the legacy of Christopher Columbus, to “end the Chinese monopoly over the U.S. medical supply chain” and to tout the accomplishments of the Trump administration.
In a nod to Republican pushback over protests for social justice, another resolution vowed to “uphold the First Amendment in response to the coronavirus pandemic and the ‘cancel culture.‘”
Democrats point to GOP’s ‘broken promise after broken promise'
Democratic Party of Georgia Chairwoman Nikema Williams greeted the start of the four-day GOP convention with a message that President Donald Trump’s “dangerous, failed presidency” has triggered public health crises, economic collapse and worsened racial injustice.
“Trump’s self-laudatory celebration this week can’t erase 170,000 lives lost under his watch or bring back the jobs of the many Americans that have become unemployed while Trump cratered our economy,” she said. “American families are grieving and looking for answers, but all this administration can give them is broken promise after broken promise.”
