MILWAUKEE — Over breakfast at their hotel on Monday, Washington state’s delegation began the first day of the Republican National Convention with a prayer acknowledging the shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania two days earlier that left one supporter of former President Donald Trump dead and two others wounded, while Trump himself seemingly escaped death by mere inches as a bulletpierced his ear.
After that somber start, state GOP Chairman Jim Walsh turned to the goals of the four-day convention and promised the delegates, alternates and guests in the room, “It’s going to be a week that you will remember forever.”
“Partly as a result of what happened over the last weekend, but also, more importantly, because of the last few months, Trump has gained so much momentum,” Walsh said. “Not just among us, his core supporters, but out there in the middle of the political spectrum. He’s picking up support, and frankly, the other guy is kind of dropping in support.”
The convention comes at a deeply unsettled moment in American politics. Trump’s attempted assassination on Saturday came after weeks of semi-public debate among Democrats about replacing President Joe Biden on their party’s ticket, as Biden fell farther behind Trump in polls following a disastrous debate performance at the end of June.
When Walsh referred to media reports that many Democrats in Congress believe Trump will be elected, prompting the room to break out in cheers, he warned that Republicans shouldn’t “spike the football before the game is over.”
“Even though the signs are good, even though momentum is on our side, we need to keep pressing and running hard through Nov. 5,” Walsh said. “And what we’re trying to do this week is build that momentum.”
While the Democratic Party’s divisions have been on full display in recent months — not only over Biden’s candidacy, but the Israel-Hamas war — Republicans projected a message of unity when the convention kicked off on Monday at a downtown arena, home of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks. While the GOP has its own rifts, notably over how aggressively to restrict abortion and whether to accept same-sex marriage, they have been papered over by seemingly unanimous support for Trump among the convention’s attendees.
“This convention is not going to be a convention where we expect a lot of divisive debate or crazy floor motions or anything like that,” Walsh told the delegation at breakfast. “We expect that this convention is going to drive Trump’s message of restoring America, of fixing what’s broken. And yes, to make America great again. We’re going to let the other side bicker and debate and have problems. We are going to unify and show America what a united Republican Party and a united America looks like.”
The former president’s hold on the Republican Party was set in sharp relief when, during Monday’s roll call to formally nominate a presidential candidate, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was roundly booed while he spoke to give his state’s votes to Trump. McConnell is one of the few congressional Republicans who has stayed on Trump’s bad side after criticizing the then-president’s role in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
“This is going to be a very different convention than we’ve had in the past,” Jeff Kent, a Republican National Committee member from Whatcom County, told the Washington delegation. “The party is unified. The party is strong. The party’s got momentum. And it’s all because of Donald Trump and the people in this room just like you and others all around the country.”
In another sign of the party coalescing behind Trump, Bellevue-area developer Hossein Khorram announced at Monday’s breakfast that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, once seen as the leading GOP presidential candidate for 2024, will headline a fundraiser for Trump in King County in August as the state GOP aims to raise $1 million for the campaign.
Eileen Sobjack, a delegate from Whatcom County, served on the committee that crafted a significantly slimmed-down GOP platform this year, which she called “a principled and concise platform that deals with the overarching principles of our party.” She told her fellow delegates that Trump had called the group — “he edited the platform, which is highly unusual” — to influence the final document.
Some opponents of abortion and same-sex marriage rights have objected to what they see as vague or weak language in the platform, and Walsh told the delegation that the Trump campaign had called him around midnight the night before to raise concerns that some Washington delegates planned to make “a surprise motion on the floor,” possibly about the platform.
After encouraging any dissatisfied delegates to raise those concerns with him directly, Walsh reminded the crowd that the Trump campaign wanted to keep the focus on the party’s unity. Delegates formally adopted the platform later on Monday.
“I think we want today to go quickly and smoothly,” Walsh said. “Because we want today to be about Donald Trump coming back from an assassination attempt and having a unified party behind him.”
