KI Convention Center in Downtown Green Bay. (PHOTO: WTAQ News)
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – The Wisconsin Republican Party is set to hold their convention at the KI Convention Center this weekend, but it will look a bit different than usual.
“We’ve taken the last couple of months to carefully think through and plan out our convention to make sure it’s as safe as possible. In fact, we rescheduled from May to make sure that we had extra time,” says Chairman Andrew Hitt, “We’ve done walk-throughs with them to make sure we’re limiting points of congestion. We put extra space between the chairs both in the rows and next to each other…we limited vendors this time around, so that we don’t have quite so many people. We have hand sanitizer throughout the venue, and of course at the registration table, we’ll have masks provided for anybody who would like one.”
However, masks will not be required.
Hitt predicts about 300 people will attend the convention, which is significantly less than the usual 700-1,200 attendees. The event also usually runs three days – Friday through Sunday – but other than a few events on Friday, the bulk of this year’s convention will occur over about seven hours on Saturday.
But, pandemic or not, party leaders felt the issues this year were too important to not have thorough discussions covering them.
“Our constitution in the Republican Party of Wisconsin doesn’t allow for a virtual conventions like the Democrats did,” Hitt tells WTAQ News, “We thought is was really important to come together. It’s an important year, there’s a lot of important things going on with the 2020 election, but also in the state there area a lot of important issues to discuss…We will vote on a new platform at our convention and we’ll also talk pretty significantly about issues and messaging that are important for this 2020 election.”
Hitt points out that both sides of the aisle seem to have recognized the importance Wisconsin is expected to have in the upcoming presidential race. Republicans recently continued in-person training events and door knocking after a few months of virtual campaigns.
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