SPOKANE — Republican delegates from Washington state were among the anti-Donald Trump forces who lost a fight Monday to demand a state-by-state roll call vote at the opening of the Republican National Convention.
The 44 members of the Washington delegation are overwhelmingly made up of supporters of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. They pushed hard to hold a state-by-state roll call on whether to change the party’s rules in ways that would take power from GOP leaders. That bid included an effort to let delegates back any candidate they want.
Jennifer Fetters, a Washington state delegate and Cruz supporter, tweeted Monday morning that the “Dump Trump” movement remained alive.
“Forty one of the 44 delegates were elected as Constitutional Conservatives and Cruz Supporters. Probably 36 still committed” (to Cruz), Fetters wrote.
But Washington state GOP delegate Joel Mattila, a Trump supporter, was critical of that effort.
“It’s shameful what is going on,” Mattila told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “They didn’t win the election, and now it is sour grapes and sore losers.”
The dissidents collected signatures from delegates in at least nine states on petitions calling for the state-by-state roll call. The states include Washington, Maine, Iowa, Wyoming, Colorado, Minnesota, Utah, Virginia and the District of Columbia, according to signed petitions obtained by the AP.
But Republican Party leaders approved rules for the convention and rejected a demand for a state-by-state roll call vote.
Hundreds of socially conservative delegates opposed to nominating Trump protested noisily after the convention’s presiding officer, Arkansas GOP Rep. Steve Womack, abruptly put the rules to a vote and declared them approved by voice.
Womack said some delegates withdrew their signatures, and petitions from three of those states no longer qualified. That left the insurgents short of the seven states needed to force a roll call, he said.
Trump won Washington state’s GOP primary in May.
