The Republican National Convention is scheduled July 18-21 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. Look for live coverage from Cleveland beginning next week from FOX 17 political reporter Josh Sidorowicz
CLEVELAND (AP) — From a spartan 16th floor office they've rented just blocks from this week's preliminary meetings of the Republican National Convention, some of the GOP rebels trying to head off Donald Trump are laying the groundwork for a revolt.
Dumping the party's presumptive presidential nominee is a longshot. They're up against an alliance between the Trump campaign and leaders of the Republican National Committee, which this week includes two dozen campaign operatives combing hotel lobbies and convention corridors counting votes and pressing delegates to oppose the dissidents.
Republicans say the Trump-RNC vote-counting "whip" team will swell to 150 when the Cleveland convention is in full swing next week.
Countering that, the renegade Republicans are setting up a high-tech messaging system to coordinate with organizers on the convention floor and plan to launch ads micro-targeted to the delegates' social media pages. They say they have organizers inside at least 35 state delegations who will help coordinate their drive to let the convention's 2,472 delegates vote for whichever candidate they want.
"There's so much energy to do this," said Dane Waters, co-founder of Delegates Unbound, one group challenging the widely held conventional wisdom that GOP rules require nearly all delegates to back a specific candidate, based on state primaries and caucuses. "Delegates are the authority of the Republican Party. This is about the future of the Republican Party."
Allied with other groups like Free the Delegates, they are facing a GOP establishment determined to prevent a toppling of the presumptive nominee — or any embarrassing, nationally televised showdowns during the four-day convention.
"There’s no convention, at least in modern era, where the likely nominee has so much opposition among other pockets of the party," Doug Koopman, political expert with Calvin College, told FOX 17.
Underscoring that, the GOP rules committee — a bastion of establishment loyalists — on Tuesday formally proposed to renew rules that require delegates to back the candidate they are "bound" to. With no chance of prevailing at that meeting, the dissidents are saving their effort for later this week, when the separate convention rules committee meets to craft a rules package to be considered by the full convention next week.
"I highly doubt it," Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a brief interview of the prospects that the rebels would succeed. "I'm hearing less and less of it, actually. I think the unbind stuff has died off considerably over the last 10 days or so."
Others are more definitive. Randy Evans, a member of the RNC from Georgia, says Trump and party loyalist forces appear to have the convention "under control," with growing numbers of Republicans eager to avoid "the prospect of chaos" if the rules are abruptly changed.
Evans said Trump can apparently count on at least 1,700 devoted delegates — enough to fend off any rule changes. An Associated Press count shows that Trump has 1,543 delegates ready to back his nomination — more than the 1,273 he needs to officially clinch the top slot.
Dump Trump advocates say they have at least 400 delegate supporters but won't provide more detail. Even though Trump won more than 13 million votes and captured around 40 primaries and caucuses, his foes say he's not conservative enough and is likely to lose and drag down GOP congressional candidates with him.
"He's not a Republican, that's the problem," said Bill Eastland, a Trump delegate who like many of the dissidents, preferred Trump's former rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Eastland says he supports the movement to allow delegates to back anyone, but concedes it will be "very, very difficult" to prevail. He says he fears blocking Trump "will actually do damage" to the GOP, in part because of how a spurned Trump might react to such a move.
Wendy Day, a Michigan delegate for Cruz leading the local "Dump Trump" effort, supports a proposal to let delegates vote their "conscience" by supporting the candidate of their choosing.
"We’re not looking to disenfranchise anybody, but we are looking to what’s best for our country, even if it makes a few people mad. Frankly that’s the question before us and it’s not an easy one," she told FOX 17 on Tuesday.
Some members of the "Dump Trump" movement claim at least 28 members of the 112-member convention rules committee support the chance — which if true would mean the full convention could vote on her proposal.
59 delegates from Michigan will attend the Republican National Convention. Of those delegates—awarded to candidates based on the results of the state's March 8 primary—25 are bound to vote for Trump during the first round of voting, while the 17 delegates each awarded to Ted Cruz and Kasich are unbound.
"That [34] is the majority of the state delegation, so any of the Kasich or Cruz factions can get together in caucus meetings or other events or join forces for a 34-25 majority over Trump votes there’s a lot of mischief that could happen, potentially," Koopman said.
Most delegations are like Michigan... and they're very much interested in the long history of the party and better future of the party. That makes this a little bit of a questionable convention if people firmly believe Trump will not be successful. It’s party first and this year’s nominee is second.”
Unruh, Waters and their allies have other options. There's talk of other amendments proposing things like requiring the presidential candidate to release tax returns, and restricting future Republican primaries to only registered Republicans. Both proposed measures are aimed at Trump, who has not released his returns and won many independent votes in the Republican primaries.
The dissidents say they've enrolled parliamentarians and lawyers to help them demand roll call votes, recounts of how delegates are voting, and other steps that might turn the convention into an embarrassing, televised battle.
But such moves aren't easy. The convention's presiding officer — who at times will be Priebus or House Speaker Paul Ryan — has clout to decide who to recognize on the convention floor to make procedural motions.
If they do, said Unruh, "It will be on international TV that they ignored" the rebels and their interpretation of party rules.
Koopman says he thinks the expectation of revolts are overblown.
“It is a unconventional year, no one will deny that because t’s sort of the year of black swan where anything can happen and new things could happen," he said. "But there is a bit of hype, perhaps too much hype just a couple days out.”
FOX 17s Josh Sidorowicz contributed to this report.
