MILWAUKEE — The last time Washington Republicans arrived at a national GOP convention, they were still visibly divided on Donald Trump.
In 2016, at the convention in Cleveland, some Washington delegates engaged in a headline-grabbing last-ditch protest, trying unsuccessfully to derail Trump’s nomination, arguing he was unfit for office.
This week, the Washington delegation at the convention Milwaukee, like the rest of the Republican Party, showed no such misgivings.
As Trump formally accepted the nomination Thursday night at Fiserv Forum, Washington’s GOP delegation stood firmly and enthusiastically united behind him.
All week long, Washington’s delegates had decked themselves out in patriotic and Trump-themed clothing. They sang Trump-themed songs and thanked God that he’d narrowly survived an assassin’s bullets. And they beamed with confidence that Trump is on his way to crush President Joe Biden in a rematch this fall.
They’ve embraced his calls for a new aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration, including pledges to employ the National Guard and police for mass deportations of millions of people.
Shannon Beddo, a delegate from Kitsap County, said a shutdown of the U.S. border is her number one hope for a second Trump term.
“If only one percent of the people coming across are bad guys, that’s tens of thousands of really bad people entering our country. But even if 99% of them are good people, we just can’t afford to house, clothe, feed, educate and medically treat all of these immigrants. We just don’t have the money to do it,” Beddo said. “Trump had that border secure when he was president and I think he’ll do it again.”
Beddo said she also believes Trump will turn around the runaway inflation that has hit the country under Biden, including higher mortgage rates that are preventing one of her sons from buying a house and starting a family.
Washington’s delegates have heard the dire warnings from Democrats and even former high-profile Republicans, saying a second Trump term would erode or even end U.S. democracy. They do not buy it.
“I’m not worried about democracy under Trump. No, absolutely not,” said Mathew Patrick Thomas, the chair of the King County Republicans and a newly elected member of the Republican National Committee.
Thomas said fears about Trump acting like a dictator are overblown because he’ll continue to be constrained by Congress and courts.
“That’s the beauty of our system … it does not spin on a dime,” he said. “It’s a million-mile-long freight train that slowly can turn this way or that way.”
In the party reshaped by allegiance to Trump, the most prominent Washington elected Republicans were noticeably absent at the Milwaukee convention. In past years, and in a different GOP, members of Congress and candidates for top offices like governor have been on hand.
Washington’s 43 delegates, plus alternates and other guests in Milwaukee have reflected a shift in the GOP under Trump. Many are first-time delegates and some said they weren’t even engaged in politics before Trump.
That includes Peter Zieve, a delegate in Milwaukee who is the founder and president of Electroimpact, a prominent aerospace company based in Mukilteo.
“It was Trump that caused me to become political,” Zieve said. He said he heard Trump in an interview for the first time when he was running in 2016 and thought: “Oh my god. Here is a guy who doesn’t know how to lie.”
Zieve, who has since become one of the state’s larger Trump donors, has come under scrutiny for subjecting employees to screeds voicing hatred of Muslims and encouraging his mostly white employees to marry and procreate. In 2017, his company agreed to a $485,000 settlement with the state Attorney General’s office after an investigation concluded he violated state law by discriminating on the basis of religion and marital status.
For many delegates, it’s Trump’s projection of strength that has stood out — an image boosted when he got up after the attempt on his life last week at a rally in Pennsylvania, face bloodied and yelled “fight, fight, fight!” as he was hustled away by Secret Service agents.
“I mean, with his fist held high — that’s strength!” said Todd Snarr, an alternate delegate from Clarkston, Asotin County. “Now you look at our current president. How many times has he fallen down? How many times has he — he begins to speak a sentence and he can’t complete it. He’s lost in space.”
Trump’s dominance of the GOP has left some Republicans back home politically adrift and unsure what to do this fall.
Saul Gamoran, from Mercer Island, supported and led state fundraising efforts for Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign in 2016, and for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley this year.
Both of those erstwhile Trump rivals pivoted from calling him unfit for the presidency, to offering their full-throated endorsements.
In an interview Thursday, before Trump’s speech, Gamoran said he doesn’t know what he’s going to do.
“I suppose I am fortunate that I live in a state where my vote won’t matter, because I don’t live in a swing state. If I did, I would be pulling my hair out right now,” he said, adding that he was surprised by Haley’s enthusiastic Trump endorsement this week.
But while the Trump era is leaving some longtime GOP hands aghast or on the fence, for many new Republican delegates and supporters, Trump has moved them in a way they’ve seen with no other candidate.
Tim Hazelo, a Machinists union member and delegate, who chairs the Island County Republicans, said Trump’s gift is his ability to make that connection with regular voters even though he’s a rich New York developer.
“He talks like you and I talk at work. He relates to the guys that are down there, the small business owners, the workers. We don’t look at him as an elitist. We look at him as a pretty cool dude,” he said.
