At a campaign rally in Charlotte, N.C., early last spring, President Donald Trump enthusiastically previewed his planned renominating convention in the city where he promised to be surrounded by “thousands of hardworking American patriots who love our country, cherish our values, respect our laws, and always put America first.”

That large March 2 North Carolina gathering was the last one his campaign held before the coronavirus pandemic limited such events. It was also the last time the president traveled to the city from which his party has since pulled the convention over frustrations with the state’s health restrictions, although the president will be in the state on Monday to visit a biotech firm in Raleigh contracted to help with mass production of a potential vaccine.

After years of planning and fundraising for the Charlotte event, the convention was moved to Jacksonville, Florida, when North Carolina’s Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper couldn’t guarantee the president a multi-day event without social distancing or face masks. After packaging the change in location as a partisan swipe at the state’s refusal to allow for a full-fledged and in-person event, Trump then altered his explanation to that of a public safety consideration last week by cancelling the portions in Florida, where the pandemic has surged in recent weeks.

But in Charlotte, the ripple effects continue. The call, at the urging of the president, to uproot rigorous planning and financial investments in the city has left businesses in a crunch and spurred concern among party leaders in a state that is crucial for Trump’s re-election.

A new NBC News/Marist poll released Monday shows Biden with a 7-point lead in the state Trump narrowly carried in 2016. The poll showed the president’s approval rating at 41 percent, a drop of 11 points in that measure since March.

And six-in-ten North Carolinians in the poll said they agreed with the statement that “the state was right to prioritize its health protocols for large gatherings over the objections of the president.”

The political bickering over the convention has left N.C. GOP leaders worried about November, with Biden hoping to reclaim a state Democrats last won when he was on the ticket in 2008 but lost in 2012. “If Joe Biden wins North Carolina, Trump gets his ass kicked all across the country,” one state Republican official told NBC News.

The decision to scrap the major in-person portion of the convention is also costing GOP donors millions of dollars on top of the economic strain being felt by businesses that were holding on amid the pandemic for the kind of boost a national political convention — and all the delegates, media and operatives — can bring to a city.

With $38 million raised by the host committee for the convention’s original location in Charlotte, the majority has been spent, Republican officials told NBC News. The host committee in Jacksonville ended up raising an additional $6 million through a separate host committee. GOP officials said much of that money remains but they are uncertain what, if any, of the money will get reimbursed to donors.

“There was no chance they were going to be able to have a convention in Charlotte,” Dallas Woodhouse, the former Executive Director of the North Carolina Republican Party from 2015 to 2019, told NBC News. “The bottom line is they wanted a shot at having a convention, and it didn’t work out, but that doesn’t make decisions wrong to take the best shot.”

The scramble has left Charlotte’s host committee with “tens of millions” in contractual liabilities, according to the group’s CEO, John Lassiter.

The city of Charlotte said in a statement in June that it plans to “hold the RNC accountable to fulfill all its outstanding obligations to the parties and make them whole.” City Attorney Patrick Baker has said the city itself has spent about $14 million on the convention, but expects to be reimbursed through a federal security grant. Outstanding issues persist for those involved with the planning of the convention in Charlotte, including lawyers from all parties trying to figure out how the money spent is going to be made whole, and searching for solutions for cancelled contracts.

With the millions of dollars put up by the host committee to drive the running of the convention in Charlotte, the individuals and businesses that contributed are now “highly, highly frustrated,” Tariq Bokhari, a Republican Charlotte City Council member, told NBC News.

Business owners and CEOs “expect the President of the United States, the governor of a state like North Carolina, the head of an organization like the RNC, the host committee — they expect these folks no matter how difficult it is when the stakes are this high to operate professionally in good faith and figure out a way to make it work,” Bokhari said.

The convention festivities in Charlotte will now be limited to one day, with a smaller showing of delegates.

“We will be starting in North Carolina for the Monday, as has always been planned,” Trump said at his Thursday news conference. “We were never taking that off.”

“It’s probably going to be at tops a couple hundred delegates and folks that work in the apparatus,” Bokhari said. “I don’t think it’ll be something that, regardless of exactly how the details shape out over the next month, the city of Charlotte will even notice is happening.”

“We had businesses that were counting on that as the shot in the arm that they need after a fairly unprecedented economic hardship,” Larkin Egleston, another Charlotte City Council member who is a Democrat, told NBC News. “I think we would have been very short-sighted if we’d have taken a public health risk just for a quick dollar or two.”

For a convention that was supposed to generate over $150 million for the city, tension between the RNC and the community continues to grow, with a major impact on small businesses already suffering from a crippling pandemic.

Vinay Patel, president of SREE Hotels, told NBC News that his company had 12 hotels in the Charlotte region that had north of $2.5 million in bookings with the RNC for the week of the convention. He noted that it could have been an additional half a million dollars in food and beverage revenue.

“It was a tremendous hit, especially in the time it came in,” Patel said. “We were in the middle of this crisis and this convention was a silver lining.”

Charlotte as a city houses over 10,000 businesses of 25 people or less, the city of Charlotte told NBC News, many of which were expecting a substantive economic amplification from the convention.

“It was the light at the end of the tunnel for them,” Anthony Kearey told NBC News of the convention’s impact, who owns a few bars and restaurants in Charlotte. “A lot of places announced they would be closing for good after the announcement that the RNC was moving.”

Bob Durkin, who manages bars and restaurants with the Bar Management Group in Charlotte, echoed the concerns. “Frankly, we don’t know if it will be able to or not, so it was devastating financially, it was devastating the time we had put in, the fact that COVID was the reason it moved but that could spell disaster for some of our businesses,” he said.

“We’re sort of in limbo right now waiting for the next step,” Durkin said of his own businesses, “but I can guarantee that some of them will not open, we’re not sure which ones, but it will have been the last straw and it’ll definitely cause some of our businesses to be out of business for good.”

And now, some Charlotte business owners see the fallout from Jacksonville as another hit.

“That’s kind of just putting salt in the wound,” Durkin said of the shift to Jacksonville, initially to do a socially-distanced convention that is now also cancelled for in-person. “It’s a shame … the reality is nobody is going to be able to benefit.”