Unconventional Diaries: The calm before the RNC storm
Yahoo News has enlisted participants at the Republican National Convention representing different viewpoints and roles to file daily diary entries on their experiences in Cleveland. They will be your eyes and ears at one of the most unconventional political gatherings in generations, offering a front-row seat on the convention floor, behind-the-scenes access to key political meetings and a vivid picture of what conventions are really like, both inside and outside the arena. We’re excited to bring you these first entries. Check back in the following days for more.
I’ve been to seven Republican National Conventions, but none have compared to 2016. This year I’m in a different role: In addition to serving as a delegate for my home state of Mississippi, I was also appointed to serve on the Rules Committee for the RNC. In the past, I’ve been a delegate, I’ve been an alternate and I’ve been a guest, but this is my first time on the committee. I’m excited for this upcoming week, as the only convention I’ve missed in recent years was in 2000, in Philadelphia.
So far, Cleveland has been very good. There has been great weather, and the flight was smooth and fast. I have no complaints. I arrived last Wednesday so that I could attend the Rules Committee’s first meeting. Our first meeting was that afternoon, and then we recessed until 8 a.m. Thursday. Then after another recess, we came back at 1 p.m. and stayed ’til midnight. It was a long day, but lots of things were accomplished and I think settled as far as the Rules Committee was concerned. I was pleased with the outcome.
The Rules Committee primarily discussed what to do about the many states that don’t register voters by party. In some states, you had to be a registered Republican to vote in the primary, but Mississippi and other states do not require voters to be registered with a party to vote in the primary elections. There was also a push within the party to unbind Trump delegates from their states’ results, allowing them to represent another candidate. We stayed up until midnight with that resolution, but it ultimately failed.
The Rules Committee will meet for the last time this year on Monday morning, before the convention starts, to adopt our final rules, unless there’s some objection. The rules are pretty expansive: It is a three-part, 62-page document, and it’s hard to say what it all contains. I do think there will be some opposition, but I hope there won’t be too much. I imagine that the rules will pass, and I hope the day will run as smoothly as my airplane did on Wednesday.
I’m looking forward to getting through the final rules meeting and getting things started. My goal for the convention is to meet Donald Trump. I don’t think that will happen, but you never know. I think that things in Cleveland will be very lively — more exciting than they’ve been at past conventions.
I can’t wait to hear all the speeches. Each night is going to have a theme to it, I think. Monday night’s theme will be illegal immigration. One speaker I’m really excited to hear is Jamiel Shaw Sr. Shaw’s son was killed by an illegal alien in 2008 — he was gunned down in the middle of the street for no reason at all. The gunman who killed this young man had been arrested three times before he killed Shaw’s son and was not deported. That’s criminal; it really says a lot about the leadership in this country.
Shaw lost his son, and I lost my niece. Several years ago, my niece was struck by an illegal immigrant who was driving drunk. I want to see that wall built. I want to enforce our border laws and support our border patrol. I don’t mind anybody who is here legally, and I welcome anybody who comes legally to this country, but not illegally.
I think the Republican Party is in good standing to move forward and away from current policies. I think that Mike Pence is a good choice to be Trump’s vice president. Pence has been a congressman for six years and has been on important committees, so he knows how it all works. After serving in Congress, he came home and was elected governor of Indiana and has done an outstanding job. I think that serving as governor and having a real job, as opposed to career politicians like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who have never had a real job, is important. As a businesswoman, I like that. I hope that Trump will announce even more of his cabinet this week. Pence will especially appeal to the evangelicals, I think. It should be a win-win.
I saw a poll on Sunday morning that showed Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were even. We’ve just got to move past all of this and win the election. We need to seek out independents and Democrats who are changing their registration for the November election. I think there are a lot of independents in my home state especially who will change their registration, and I hope to see that across the country.
As told to Susanna Heller/Yahoo News
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I remember when Stand Together Against Trump started. It was a Monday morning and Trump announced that he was doing a pre-Ohio primary rally at the I-X Center, in Cleveland, later that week. I got an email from my friend Nate that said, “We have to do something when he comes to town.” And from there we organized, and I think we had 15-20 physicians and residents outside wearing shirts saying, “Muslim Doctors Save Lives.” And Nate and I felt compelled to go inside and interrupt the speech and chant, “Stop the bigotry.”
We thought Trump was done, he would fizzle out, Republicans would nominate Cruz or Kasich and we would go back to our normal lives. And that didn’t happen. The Indiana primary happened, and he was all of a sudden the nominee. And it hit a lot of people like a wall, this thing we didn’t think could happen, that an overtly racist person would be a major party’s nominee for president. It just stopped us in our tracks.
We always thought: Well, we’ll start organizing and we would join a bigger group, a national organization that is well and well organized. We’d have our group of doctors and join something bigger. But no one else had anything for the Thursday night when Trump accepts the nomination. And then, over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten emails from groups that are saying, “We want to join you and come be a part of this.” And so it has expanded beyond a group of just doctors and nurses to a whole host of young professionals, a whole bunch of individuals around the country who are looking for something. It has been wonderful, but I’ve also been busy!
We’re not here to yell at Trump delegates or supporters. We think they should have their space to project their views. No one is going to be convinced by a yelling match. We are having daily peace and nonviolence trainings, and those will be focused on taking people, many of whom are first-time protesters, and preparing them for the chaos of a convention, of a busy city, of a hectic situation and to make sure they know how to react and make sure it is a peaceful event. That’s a fundamental thought of what we believe but also what we think is most effective. We think Trump wins when there is violence. We think he wins when there is dislike and hatred and anger. He is really very good at driving narratives when people don’t like each other. We think the message can be that we don’t dislike any one person but that we have different values. Our values are that we respect all people, regardless of their religion, regardless of where they came from, whether they are man or woman. And we think if we keep the discussion this week on that area, on a positive projection of values, we think we win. We think if it descends into hatred, Trump probably wins the week. It’s also strategic, it’s how we see the election evolving.
Right now, we’re expecting the turnout to be high hundreds, low thousands for Thursday. Those are mainly out of town. The rest is how many people in Cleveland, in Ohio, in the Midwest turn on their TVs Thursday morning and realize, “Trump is accepting the nomination tonight.” And how many of those people get in the car, come to downtown and wear a yellow shirt to join us, that will determine if the rally gets 1,000 people or 5,000 or more. I hope a lot of people come out, but a lot will depend on the first couple of days of the convention.
We’re excited. We have a lot of people coming in from across the country in the next few days. We have people staying at our house. All the Stand Together Against Trump leadership is opening our doors. It is an exciting thing to have people coming together around a positive message at this moment. We really see it as a moment. Nothing like this in our lives has happened before in terms of presidential politics. We’ve never seen a candidate as dependent on rebranding himself at the convention. He has to rebrand himself or he can’t win. And we think this is a moment where we can quote Trump back to himself at an inconvenient time for him, and remind people we’re better than this. We have a friend driving in from Chicago, we have a friend flying in from North Carolina, we have friends coming in from the East Coast, and to have them all come together is exciting. We’re stoked.
As told to Andrew Bahl/Yahoo News
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I’ve been really anticipating the convention. You watch all the stuff on TV and they hype it up, but it has been great. The people at the airport took care of us. The gentleman who met Rep. Tom Rice and me there made sure we got to the right place, grabbed us a taxi and got us straight down here.
I flew down with Tom, whose campaign I worked on in South Carolina. My congressional district was created during redistricting, so before Tom was elected, I was selected to be the Republican chair for the new congressional seat. He’s done a fabulous job, a real gentleman. He’s on the House Ways and Means Committee as a sophomore already. He’s a really good guy and understands things.
I had a conversation with a woman on the plane, and she wanted to unbind the delegates from their states’ primary results in order to stop Donald Trump. But after I got done talking to her, she wanted to drop out of that group and volunteer for the RNC. She thought she couldn’t trust Trump to make his own Supreme Court nominations, but I said, “Let’s see, he’s already put out a list of names. He’s run them by Ted Cruz and people. And even if you can only trust Donald Trump 30 percent, you can’t trust Hillary Clinton at all.” I think the bell went off in her head. I also sat next to a young Army man and talked him through how to go to college through the military. So it was an eventful plane ride.
They had a delegate meeting today, but I missed it. We’ve had some other meetings already and I pretty much know what I’m doing based on life experience and being my own guy. I’m kind of unique: I’m retired military, I was a businessman and I was a city councilman off and on for 18 years. I have a military, business and political background, so I can look at things from a lot of different angles. It has always served me well, and this is a great way to put a different hat on and approach things differently.
I’m looking forward to exploring and looking around. Tomorrow we have a breakfast to get things settled, then I’ll get my credentials and go from there. We have to be at the arena at 1 p.m. and I’m excited to get in the arena to check it out.
As told to Andrew Bahl/Yahoo News
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