Ohio Valley Delegates Being Asked to ‘Dump Trump’ at Republican National Convention

He is also troubled by the threat of violent demonstrations, but he said Pennsylvania delegates are also arming themselves in solidarity with Trump and his views on gun rights in the aftermath of the mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub.

Whether by design, indifference or self-preservation, Trump has been mum – and is seemingly caught in the middle – at a time when powerful and polarizing forces care a lot about the party’s platform next week at the GOP convention in Cleveland.

The absence of prominent women speaking for the GOP nominee is incongruous with political reality.

What will the Republican Party look like following next week’s convention?

“Trump is a different kind of candidate than we’ve dealt with before”, said Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor at Boston College who wrote a history of the Republican Party.

But if 25 percent of them – at least 28 out of 112 – support what’s known as a minority report that’s sent to the convention floor, all 2,000-some GOP delegates can vote on the issue. Rice made clear she was not interested in any such offer; she will not even attend the convention. “I think they are going to pass as now written”.

Even so, Republican convention organizers say their fundraising is going well. “It’s unusual, but this is an unusual year with unusual circumstances”. Perhaps as a reflection of the grass-roots nature of this latest effort, the call devolved into a cacophony of unmuted lines after about a half hour, as Unruh ended the formal portion of the call but activists and delegates aired out their many questions. In addition, “I have been in close coordination with the Trump campaign regarding how I may be of assistance during the convention”, he said.

Then in 2014, four months after the Republicans chose Cleveland for the convention, a white police officer shot dead 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was black, in a case that became a national focal point for the protest movement Black Lives Matter.

For Kelly, this year’s convention is his first as a delegate.

The group was bullish heading into the week’s events. Their theory is that enough delegates would shift from Trump to keep him from getting to 1,237 votes on the first ballot. “Trump is our only hope to gain our country back”, Teresa Willis, 60, said at a Cincinnati-area rally last week. “A Republican looking to undermine another Republican is not good for the party”.

If Unruh is able to engineer the Rules Committee proceedings the way she wants and bring a minority report to the floor for a vote, it would not only drive the convention’s nominating process into completely uncharted territory, but would also nearly certainly provoke a schism within the party. They’ll use their influence to try to block any uprising, and they have the experience with these gatherings to move the party’s machinery behind the scenes. The rules committee will meet beginning Thursday.

Later this week, a meeting of the convention rules committee gives Trump’s opponents a chance, however faint, to somehow derail his candidacy. But if he stays away, it won’t be because of Trump. It also loaned iPhones to organizers of the 2012 Republican convention. “It means more American jobs, higher wages, and a better standard of living”, it read. “Flynn, a registered Democrat but fierce critic of President Obama, previously ran the Defense Intelligence Agency”.

After the 2012 election, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus told reporters: “The RNC can not and will not write off any demographic or community or region of this country”.

“Donald Trump is the most pro-gay Republican nominee ever”, GoProud co-founder and GOP strategist Chris Barron told CNN.

Dashiell says she’ll stand behind the party’s nominee, whoever that is. He has not spoken in favor of amending the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

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A key clause in the rule change seems directly aimed at Trump and states, “The preference of any candidate seeking nomination for president of the United States shall have no bearing upon the submission of names for nomination for vice president of the United States nor the recording of votes for the same”. Nina Turner told The Associated Press on Friday.