CLEVELAND — Republicans are bracing for a contentious convention, as intraparty divisions over Donald Trump threaten to disrupt his nomination and the party’s carefully laid plans to unify behind him.
Against Trump is a grassroots coalition of delegates, as well as an outside political group that has set up a war room in downtown Cleveland. They are contacting delegates directly and via social media.
These anti-Trump forces are waging an intense effort to educate delegates about how they could move on the floor of the convention to dump the presumptive nominee and elevate an alternative.
For Trump are Republican Party leaders, the Trump campaign, and delegates loyal to both. They dismiss the coup’s prospects but are taking its threat to disrupt convention proceedings very seriously.
To prevent the rebellion from gaining momentum, the New York businessman’s allies are lobbying all delegates and moving to strengthen GOP rules that bind delegates to the winner of the primaries and caucuses.
First stop is the convention rules committee on Thursday.
Delegates for and against Trump will battle over an amendment that could pave the way for them to vote their conscience once he is formally placed in nomination at the convention. Regardless, both sides expect the real action to take place beginning Monday on the floor of Quicken Loans Arena.
“We don’t need anything out of rules,” said Dane Waters, the GOP strategist running Delegates Unbound, a 501(c)4 organization working against Trump. “What we’re planning is doing everything on the floor.”
Current party rules stipulate that delegates are apportioned and automatically bound on first ballot on the convention floor to candidates per their performance with voters in the primaries and caucuses held during the primary season.
But party officials are worried enough that on Tuesday, two members of the Republican National Committee proposed rules changes in the RNC’s standing committee on rules that were intended to cripple the convention rules committee’s ability to vote to unbind the delegates.
“With kind of uncertainty, I wanted to shut down all of the maneuvering and shenanigans — whatever you call it — and make sure everybody gets behind our presumptive nominee,” said Solomon Yue, an RNC committeeman from Oregon who proposed a rules change.
Yue’s rules change, and one proposed by a colleague, was tabled by the RNC’s standing rules committee out of deference to the convention rules committee. Yue predicted the coup would fail. Nonetheless, he said, proposed the changes because “you need to be fully prepared.”
Delegates Unbound opened a war room in downtown Cleveland on Sunday and is working furiously to prepare for the convention.
The group’s main activities involve educating delegates through a highly targeted social media campaign and one-on-one contacts. In the modern era, the vote of delegates to nominate the presidential candidates has been a mere formality, so a main hurdle is convincing them that they have the power to vote their conscience, even as Trump’s allies argue otherwise.
Delegates Unbound plans to bolster its effort with television advertising on Fox News and CNN. The plan is for the spot to begin airing by week’s end.
Free the Delegates, the grassroots coalition of delegates opposed to Trump that is working with Delegates Unbound, is focused on the convention rules committee. They need 28 votes in rules to pass a “minority report” and force a convention vote on the conscience clause.
Kendal Unruh, the Colorado delegate behind Free the Delegates, says she has the votes. Unruh said the court ruling out Virginia that overturned a state’s right to bind delegates as a matter of state law, provided a huge psychological boost to her effort. The Trump campaign also claimed victory because the decision did not impact RNC rules on binding.
“I’ve got my votes solidified on the minority report,” she said. “So we’re extraordinarily confident.”
The Trump campaign is playing it cool and doesn’t appear outwardly anxious — either about the possibility for a media spectacle that could embarrass the real estate mogul or about losing a vote that could spiral into a situation where his nomination could be derailed.
A source familiar with Trump’s convention strategy told the Washington Examiner that its operation’s internal whip count pegged support for the minority report at 15 to 20 votes.
Regardless, the Trump campaign estimates that 1,500 to 1,700 delegates committed to the real estate mogul’s nomination, if a vote on the conscience clause was held on the convention floor.
“We’re not trying to manage with a heavy thumb, we’re just trying to make sure that Mr. Trump gets his just due, which is a convention that nominates him,” the source said. “We’re not afraid of an active debate, but we firmly believe that Mr. Trump followed these rules and won fair and square.”
The RNC isn’t taking the insurrection lightly. A party official acknowledged to the Examiner that internally there is concern about disruptions on the floor that could dominate media coverage of the convention and obscure from Trump’s message.
Party officials have taken the lead in whipping members of the convention rules committee against the conscience clause amendment being proposed by Unruh’s Free the Delegates forces, according to a Republican operative who opposes Trump and is in regular contact with rules committee members.
This operative charged the RNC with trying to manipulate the convention in Trump’s favor. “They should be fair arbiters, let the convention work its will and then thank God if the delegates save him and the committee,” this individual said.
An RNC official confirmed to the Examiner that the committee has been in close contact with delegates, but denied suggestions that it was applying pressure versus keeping tabs on where they stand.
The official declined to say whom from the committee was communicating with the delegates. The frustration among some Republicans that they are dealing with a rebellion on the eve of the convention is palpable.
“Our presumptive nominee has been under almost constant attack since May 3” when he effectively won the primary, Bruce Ash, an RNC committeeman from Arizona, said during a hearing of the RNC standing committee on rules. “Some in our party have decided they know better than the voters.”
