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Anti-Donald Trump Forces See Convention Coup as Within Reach
| Wall Street Journal | - |
Months
after Donald Trump appeared to seal the Republican nomination for
president, anti-Trump forces still have one last chance to force a vote
on the party's convention floor that would throw open the GOP contest
again.
Anti-Donald Trump Forces See Convention Coup as Within Reach
Backing of 28 Rules Committee members would allow a full vote on unbinding delegates
ENLARGE
A photo from last week
shows work being done in Cleveland on the main stage for the Republican
National Convention, which begins July 18.
Photo:
Mark Gillispie/Associated Press
It’s a long shot, but by some counts they are remarkably close to getting past the first hurdle next week in Cleveland.
Mr. Trump’s intraparty foes, led by a group of rogue delegates, are waging an intense behind-the-scenes effort to push the Republican National Convention’s Rules Committee for a vote on freeing delegates to back whom they wish, rather than being bound to Mr. Trump.
The presumptive nominee’s team is fighting back just as vehemently, with an organized campaign of dozens of aides and volunteers. It’s a power struggle that has prompted threats of reprisals and left many Republicans anxious that it could hurt the party’s prospects in November.
The anti-Trump camp needs the backing of 28, or one-quarter, of the 112 Convention Rules Committee members, in order to place the issue before the full convention. A Wall Street Journal survey suggests it could be close.
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Others counting votes have their own tallies. Internal surveys of the Rules Committee conducted by RNC member Randy Evans of Georgia, who is whipping votes trying to help Mr. Trump fend off the insurrection, found at least 18 committee members open to voting to unbind. The Trump campaign’s count shows about 15 leaning toward the so-called conscience clause, according to people familiar with the campaign.
Kendal Unruh, a Colorado schoolteacher on the committee leading part of the anti-Trump movement, said she has private commitments from more than 30 committee members, but that many aren’t willing to admit so publicly.
All involved in counting votes say those numbers fluctuate on a day-to-day basis. If the provision gets the necessary committee votes when the panel meets beginning next Wednesday, it would place the issue before the full convention, where it would need 1,237 votes—half the delegates—to pass.
Though a majority of the convention delegates are bound to support Mr. Trump, Mr. Evans’s count shows just about 890 delegates are personally loyal to the New Yorker. Another 680 oppose Mr. Trump. That leaves 900 delegates who are presumed to be “in play,” he said. The stop-Trump forces would have to take nearly two-thirds of them to block his nomination.
Pushing the measure to the floor would create unprecedented chaos, with the party delegates fighting over a nomination that has long been viewed as settled in full display of the international news media. With such enormous stakes, members of the committee, including Graham Hunt, an insurance salesman from Orting, Wash., are the focus of a heated behind-the-scenes lobbying effort from both camps.
“It’s intensifying,” Mr. Hunt said one recent day at 9:30 a.m. “I have 83 emails already today.” On average, he gets more than 200 emails a day from unbinding proponents along with several daily phone calls from Mr. Trump’s campaign staff.
Mr. Trump, who for nearly a year ignored the nuts and bolts of securing delegate slots, realized such a fight was brewing in March when The Wall Street Journal reported he garnered fewer delegates in Louisiana than primary rival Ted Cruz, even though Mr. Trump won more of the state’s votes. He hired longtime Republican operative Paul Manafort, who led President Gerald Ford’s whip operation in 1976.
Mr. Trump is confident he will prevail.
“It’s ridiculous. We won more votes than any other Republican, we won 38 states and now they want to try to” take it away, he said in an interview last week. “No one is even writing about it anymore.”
Yet every day last week, Mr. Hunt in Washington state received a phone call, and on some days several calls, from a Trump campaign staffer or surrogates and volunteer seeking to win him over to their camp.
What would it take for the former state lawmaker to back the New York businessman, Mr. Trump’s allies ask, or at least to come out in opposition to the effort to unbind delegates?
ENLARGE
A power struggle
involving presumptive nominee Donald Trump, shown earlier this year, has
prompted threats of reprisals and left many Republicans anxious that it
could hurt the party’s prospects in November.
Photo:
John Minchillo/Associated Press
He remains offended at Mr. Trump’s July 2015 assertion that Sen. John McCain is “not a war hero” because he was captured during the Vietnam War, Mr. Hunt tells them. He also offered suggestions about specific policy proposals to help war veterans. A Trump aide told Mr. Hunt they would seek to add his suggestions to the party’s official platform.
“Actions will be sufficient and we’re not there yet,” Mr. Hunt said.
Some delegates report receiving veiled threats. One said a Trump surrogate called to say she was being monitored closely, a message she viewed as an attempt at intimidation.
Mike Stuart, Mr. Trump’s state co-chairman from West Virginia who is a member of the Rules Committee, said he would ask the panel to issue a formal reprimand of anti-Trump Republicans such as Mrs. Unruh and Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee who has been a strident voice against Mr. Trump.
“I would support consideration of sanctions against established Republicans who work to undermine our nominee,” Mr. Stuart said.
An aide to Mr. Romney declined to comment for this article. The former Massachusetts governor hasn’t said if he believes delegates should be unbound.
Mrs. Unruh and many of her allies see Mr. Trump as a historically bad nominee who would doom fellow Republicans. In addition, they are arguing that Mr. Trump’s team shouldn’t fear one final test of his popularity from the party’s delegates.
“If we are a party of liberty, what are we afraid of?” wrote Gina Blanchard-Reed, of Washington state, in an email to her fellow Rules Committee members. “What are we unwilling to do? Does it mean that Donald Trump would be denied the nomination? Possibly. Possibly not. He would come out of the Convention stronger if he won the nomination as a result of a FREE WILL vote.”
The Trump campaign is preparing for some nightmare scenarios if the opposition gets close to the 28 votes it needs. One fear is that Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who has been critical of Mr. Trump and is the highest-profile Rules Committee member, delivers a speech urging votes in favor of unbinding delegates.
Mr. Lee, whose wife is also on the committee, hasn’t revealed his opinion on the binding question to Mrs. Unruh, the Trump campaign or RNC members and declined to do so in an interview.
Some establishment Republicans are pushing against the unbind movement.
In Wisconsin, where Mr. Trump lost the primary after the entire local GOP apparatus unified against him, two RNC members, Steve King and Mary Buestrin, are lobbying against the unbinding effort. Both also sit on the Rules Committee, and Mr. King is the longtime chairman of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s campaigns.
“Don’t be fooled, these folks seeking support for conscience clauses or other similar efforts are asking you to disenfranchise the votes of our family members, friends and neighbors,” the two wrote Friday to fellow committee members.
Art Wittich, a Montana state legislator on the committee, remains undecided on the conscience clause. He is troubled, though, that the unbinding effort hasn’t presented an alternative candidate who could plausibly win nomination from the convention floor, he said.
“My question is, if you get what you want, then what?” Mr. Wittich said. “Nobody can really answer that.”
—Beth Reinhard and Julian Routh contributed to this article.
Write to Reid J. Epstein at Reid.Epstein@wsj.com 
