Efforts fade in the ‘dump Trump movement’

CLEVELAND—An aging office building in downtown Cleveland seems an unlikely place to plot a dying revolution.

But on the eve of the Republican National Convention here on the shores of Lake Erie, a Christian schoolteacher paced the worn carpet of a rented office Sunday and talked about one last attempt to block Donald Trump’s coronation as the party’s nominee this week in Cleveland.

It’s longer than a long shot.

Still, Kendal Unruh, a longtime Colorado delegate, isn’t ready to surrender yet, despite a bruising defeat by a coalition of Trump staffers and Republican operatives Trump once decried as stacked against him.

Today’s events will likely settle firmly which side prevails, and decide finally whether Trump clears a final wobbling hurdle to the GOP nomination.

The battle began months ago when Unruh, a high school civics teacher at Jim Elliot Christian School in Englewood, Colo., realized she couldn’t support her party’s nominee if the nominee was Trump.

This was more than average voter angst. Unruh has been elected as a Colorado delegate to the last seven Republican National Conventions to choose the GOP nominee for president.

As Trump gained steam, Unruh’s alarm grew. She didn’t think his positions were conservative. She didn’t think he represented the Republican Party. She didn’t think she could vote for him.

The decision was sealed last fall when she saw a video of Trump mocking a reporter with disabilities. Unruh was stricken. Her 6-year-old autistic son had died of a congenital heart defect in 1998. She said Trump’s public mocking of The New York Times journalist seemed like an assault on the value of people with disabilities: “It wasn’t just a juvenile tactic to me.”

From her kitchen table in Colorado, Unruh launched “Free the Delegates,” an effort to use her position on the national party’s rules committee to lobby for a conscience clause—a rules change that formally would “unbind” delegates from their state’s primary vote and allow each delegate to vote for the nominee of his or her choice at the convention.

Another group—“Delegates Unbound”—was making a similar argument. This organization wasn’t specifically arguing against Trump, but it did argue that delegates have always been legally free to vote for the nominee of their choice—a position party officials dispute.

Eventually, the two groups joined forces and formed a plan: They’d lobby 28 members of the 112-member rules committee to vote to unbind delegates. If they prevailed, the proposal would go to the convention floor for a vote.

The ensuing weeks brought a fury of lobbying from both sides. Unruh and a handful of workers called and emailed committee members, furiously trying to get the 28 votes they needed. Meanwhile, Trump staffers called many of the same people, trying to persuade them to block the effort. Some delegates said they got scores of emails and calls each day.

Some emails grew nasty. When Utah delegate Stefani Williams wrote an open letter supporting the efforts of “Free the Delegates,” she got a searing email from Carl Paladino, honorary co-chair of Trump’s campaign in New York: “You should be hung for treason Stefani. There will not be a Republican Party if you attempt to replace Trump. I’ll be in your face in Cleveland.”

Paladino confirmed to a New York news outlet that he wrote the email but insisted the language was appropriate.

“What the person was proposing is to encourage violation of the rules of the Republican Party under which Donald Trump rose legally to be the presumptive candidate,” he said. “The person is being treacherous to the party in doing so and as such the colloquialism is appropriate and if the person’s underwear is all bunched up over his or her sensitivity to my reaction then tell the person if he or she can’t take the heat of what he or she dished out, then get out of the kitchen.”

By last week, the rules committee gathered in Cleveland, and both sides were hard at work.

Unruh and her supporters worked the phones.

Staffers from Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee worked their own strategy. In a suite at the Westin Hotel, they planned coordinated moves to lobby delegates to block any proposal the other side brought. CNN reported that Trump’s campaign created a texting system to alert rules committee members in real time about the campaign’s preferred positions on various amendments.

The Trump side’s ground game worked.

The members voted to keep Trump delegates bound by 87 to 12. Unruh then argued for an amendment that would allow a conscience clause. The committee voted to shut down debate on the measure.

Unruh said she found it ironic: The candidate who claimed to be the ultimate outsider worked with the party establishment to shut down outside dissent.

By Sunday afternoon, Unruh was still working the phones. She’s going for one more long shot bid to find enough delegates to bring a minority report to the convention floor Monday afternoon. In a narrow hallway with mismatched office furniture, Unruh held her phone in her lap and seemed determined to keep working until the last door closes.