Colorado delegation fails in another bid to replace Trump as Republican presidential nominee
Colorado’s delegation to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on Monday was in the thick of a last-ditch effort to usurp Donald Trump as the party’s nominee.
The floor of the Quicken Loans Arena erupted into boos and chants of “roll-call vote” when the chairman of the convention ruled that the “ayes” had it in a critical vote to adopt rules for the convention. Among many other things, those rules bound delegates to the outcomes in their state elections.
Advocates of the Never Trump movement had sought to have those delegates unbound by the rules so there could be an actual vote for Trump.
After the ruling, sources say Dudley Brown and a handful of other Colorado delegates walked off the floor in protest.
But not everyone saw it that way.
“After the last vote, some of them went to get dinner,” said Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams, who is a member of the delegation. “Just like the end of a ballgame, some people leave a little bit before the end to miss the rush.”
Williams was among those from Colorado who supported having a roll-call vote.
“Where there is a legitimate dispute, that is the time when having a roll-call vote makes sense,” said Williams, an at-large delegate for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. “I thought there was sufficient division.”
But Williams said the Republican Party followed the parliamentary rules, and those calling for a roll-call vote fell short of the required number of states requesting the move.
“They do that so that you don’t have one person or a few people bog down an assembly,” Williams said. “You want to kind of balance the will of the people versus a process that would take weeks to have an assembly.”
Patrick Davis, who is an alternate Colorado delegate for Trump and leads the Trump campaign in Colorado, said he thinks the dispute Monday afternoon will be the end of it.
“This is as exciting and ruckus as Republicans get,” he said. “The demonstration on the floor did not even last 5 minutes. I think it’s over. It was a family feud but we’re already starting to come back together.”
Leading the feud is Kendal Unruh, a teacher who lives in Aurora and is at the head of the Never Trump movement’s efforts to unbind delegates.
Unruh couldn’t be reached for comment Monday, but Williams and Davis said they saw her on the convention floor talking to national media.
“Kendal is a worthy adversary,” Davis said.
The movement got a majority of delegates from nine states to initially request a roll-call vote, but presiding official Steve Womack said three states withdrew their petitions.
Two votes were held on the issue.
After the first vote, the arena erupted in chants and chaos. Then Womack returned and explained what was occurring.
Williams said it was a mistake not to explain to voters the first time what had happened with the movement to force a roll call vote.
“The way it was initially ruled – where the person chairing the meeting said without objection and then moved on – that was a problem,” Williams said. “But then they went back and corrected it. They explained the process … you’re always better off explaining the process.”
Row of the new townhouses in Richmond, British Columbia.





