GOP panel defeats anti-Trump effort on convention delegates
CLEVELAND — A committee at the Republican National Convention delivered a major blow to the effort by conservatives to derail Donald Trump’s drive to the party’s presidential nomination, voting late Thursday to rebuff their push to let delegates vote for any candidate they’d like.
The convention’s rules committee used a voice vote to reject a proposal by Colorado delegate Kendal Unruh to let delegates “cast a vote of conscience” and abandon the candidates they’d been committed to by state primaries or caucuses.
The amendment became the focal point of furious lobbying that’s pitted conservatives against the Trump campaign and top leaders of the Republican Party. On a 112-member rules panel dominated by party and Trump loyalists, the outcome was expected.
Unruh, like many of her allies a delegate for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and his abandoned presidential campaign, has said she expects to collect signatures from 28 members of the rules panel. That would be enough to bring her proposal to a vote by the full convention, which opens Monday.