Trump’s decision not to invite Moore — the association’s vice chair — and Polis sparked backlash from Democrats, with 18 sitting governors announcing that they would boycott the dinner.
“If the reports are true that not all governors are invited to these events, which have historically been productive and bipartisan opportunities for collaboration, we will not be attending the White House dinner this year,” the Democratic governors wrote in a joint statement Tuesday. “Democratic governors remain united and will never stop fighting to protect and make life better for people in our states.”
Moore also suggested Sunday that his race may have played a role in the White House’s decision not to invite him to the event.
“It’s not lost on me that I’m the only Black governor in this country, and I find that to be particularly painful, considering the fact that the president is trying to exclude me from an organization that not only my peers have asked me to help to lead, but then also a place where I know I belong in,” he said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.”
POLITICO previously reported that the NGA decided not to sponsor the planned meeting between Trump and the governors once it became clear only Republicans would be invited, with the organization writing in an email to people involved in planning that “no NGA resources will be used to support transportation for this activity.”
Brandon Tatum, the CEO of the NGA, said in a statement last week that the group was “disappointed in the administration’s decision to make it a partisan occasion this year.”
At last year’s annual meeting between Trump and the governors, the president got into an argument with Maine Gov. Janet Mills over his administration’s moves to restrict transgender athletes’ participation in school sports, with Trump ultimately threatening to pull funding and Mills promising to sue.
The NGA has undergone considerable turmoil in the last year, with Democratic governors raising alarm about the association’s unwillingness to more vocally criticize the Trump administration.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker threatened to withdraw from the group over Trump’s decision to deploy other states’ National Guard troops to their states.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, the group’s Republican chair, also criticized the administration’s National Guard deployments, telling The New York Times in an October interview that he worried the president was undermining states’ rights.
In a letter sent Monday by Stitt to other governors and obtained by The Associated Press, he urged members to unite together, writing “the solution is not to respond in kind, but to rise above and to remain focused on our shared duty to the people we serve.”
The New York Times also first reported last week that some Democratic governors weren’t invited to the dinner.
“The President has the discretion to invite whomever he wants to the White House, and he welcomes all those who received an invitation to come, and if they don’t want to, that’s their loss,” Leavitt said of the dinner on Tuesday.
