Unconventional #35: The senator who could sink Trump
CLEVELAND — And so it begins. Unconventional arrived here this morning after a series of delays and a redeye out of LAX. We could really use a good iced coffee. (Any local recs? Tweet them to @andrewromano.)
For the rest of the week, and the entirety of next, we’ll be filing from the Rock ’n’ Roll Capital of World, where the GOP — or the portion of it that’s able to tolerate Donald Trump, at least — will be crowning its 2016 nominee. Then we’ll head directly to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia.
Instead of our usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, we’ll be posting new installments of Unconventional every weekday from now until July 28. In addition to our usual reporting and analysis, each post will feature original, on-the-ground dispatches from the rest of the Yahoo Politics team. Our goal is to be the one thing you need to read to understand what’s really happening at the conventions.
To get the party started, today’s Unconventional will serve as an introduction to four of our crack convention correspondents — Jon Ward, Hunter Walker, Holly Bailey and Liz Goodwin — and the brilliantly “unconventional” reporting they’re already doing in Cleveland and elsewhere.
You’ll be reading a lot more of their work in the days ahead.
The tea party senator who could decide Trump’s fate in Cleveland
By Jon Ward
CLEVELAND — This week, watch Mike Lee.
The mild-mannered first-term U.S. senator from Utah will arrive here Wednesday night or Thursday morning to cast a significant vote in the long-odds battle being waged by some Republican delegates to snatch the party’s presidential nomination from Donald Trump.
(Read the full story here.)
Lee, 45, is one of Utah’s two members on the convention Rules Committee, which will vote at the end of the week on a motion to unbind the 2,472 convention delegates next week. If the committee sends the resolution to the convention floor, the whole convention would vote up or down on the measure.
The obstacles facing the dump-Trump effort are high. Multiple Trump campaign officials said Tuesday their whip count indicated that the “conscience clause” would not get out of Rules, and that if it did, it would lose on the convention floor. There were no signs of nervousness in the Trump whip operation, one said.
Allies of the dump-Trump effort are more optimistic that the Rules Committee might pass the measure to the full convention, but less hopeful about their chances there. In addition, other observers of the process think that delegates trying to send the convention to multiple ballots by having a few hundred delegates abstain from voting on the first ballot is the better strategy.
Nonetheless, if the Rules Committee does keep the issue alive by sending the conscience clause to the floor of the convention, it could take on life in a way that’s hard to predict.
And Lee is at the heart of this battle. His support for or against the conscience clause proposal will send a powerful signal to those among the other 111 members of the Rules Committee who are wavering. Lee’s wife, Sharon — who, like her husband, was chosen by the other Utah delegates to represent them on the committee — is believed likely to follow his lead, so his decision could swing two votes of the 28 required to bring the motion to the floor. One member of the Rules Committee said many members believe that Lee’s support could be crucial.
A spokesman for Lee said Tuesday that the senator has made up his mind how he will vote and will share his decision with other members of the committee this week.
“Everyone’s lobbying him,” said a senior Trump campaign official.
So far, Lee has been tightlipped about his intentions. There are plenty of reasons, however, why he would vote against Trump on this issue.
Lee has publicly stated his very deep reservations about Trump. Very recently, Lee said in an interview with NewsMaxTV that Trump had made “religiously intolerant” statements, referring to Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country. Lee noted that Trump is “wildly unpopular” in Utah, which is home to millions of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a “religious minority … who were ordered exterminated by the governor of Missouri in 1838.”
“I’d like some assurances that he’s going to be a vigorous defender for the U.S. Constitution,” Lee said.
And in May, Lee said of Trump: “He scares me to death.”
And Lee is a close ally of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who fought a bitter battle with Trump in the Republican primary. Trump mocked Cruz’s wife in one of his infamous retweets and alleged — based on a story in the National Enquirer with no apparent basis in fact — that Cruz’s father was connected to Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
Lee was enraged by Trump’s accusation about Cruz’s father. “He said that. He actually said that. He said that without any scintilla, without a scintilla of evidence,” Lee told NewsMax.
