Politicians make lots of promises while running for office. But can they actually deliver? Most of the time, we don’t find out until after the election. But last weekend, as a first-time delegate to Colorado’s Republican state convention, I witnessed a major exception to the rule: Sometimes, you get to see promises broken in real time.
I’m talking about Donald Trump, of course, who has made some bold claims about his leadership skills during the presidential campaign. “We need a smart president; we need a great leader,” Trump says in a video clip on his website. “If I’m elected president, I will do a truly great job. I’ll make America great again. Everybody’s going to be happy.”
Promises don’t get much bigger than that. If Trump really were a great leader, he could have organized a competitive campaign in Colorado. But there was nothing smart or great or even competent about the leadership of the Trump campaign in the Centennial State. Yes, the process was complicated. But the State of Colorado’s election laws are nowhere near as complicated as running the federal government, negotiating with Congress, conducting international diplomacy and commanding the military.
As U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner (R) tweeted afterwards: “How on earth are you going to defeat [the Islamic State] if you can’t figure out the [Colorado Republican] convention.”
Simply stated, Colorado was a leadership test. Cruz passed, Trump failed, and all of the state’s 34 elected delegates to the Republican National Convention went to Cruz accordingly. But Trump refused to accept the loss, calling the outcome “rigged” and “corrupt.” One of Trump’s advisers has even claimed “[t]here was not an election in Colorado.”
Those claims just aren’t true. To become a state delegate, I stood for election twice: First at the March 1 precinct caucuses and again at a county convention on March 19. All told, Republicans held more than 3,000 precinct and county elections across Colorado. Those local elections sent representatives to regional assemblies in Colorado’s seven congressional districts and the statewide convention in Colorado Springs.
To get elected at the precinct and county level, I put my name forward, asked my neighbors to vote for me and answered any questions they had. Mostly, I was asked which presidential candidate I supported — Marco Rubio until he dropped out, and then Ted Cruz.
Throughout the process, I noticed relatively few people speaking up in favor of Trump. In fact, when Republicans in my county took a non-binding straw poll on March 1, Trump received less than 20 percent of the vote.
Going into the state convention a few weeks later, I pledged my support for Cruz. Even so, his campaign volunteers continued to reach out by phone, email, text and directly in person. They asked again for my support and answered my questions about the procedures of the state convention, which I had never experienced.
At the state convention, roughly 600 candidates were running for 13 national-delegate positions. So each campaign developed a shortlist of vetted candidates, called a “slate,” that they asked people to support. The Cruz campaign’s slate of candidates was practically everywhere you looked. Their names and corresponding ballot numbers were printed on flyers, on the backs of T-shirts and inside copies of the Colorado Statesman newspaper.
The Cruz campaign even text-blasted the slate to people’s cell phones. And, of course, Cruz showed up to the convention and gave a speech, while Trump sent a surrogate. Therefore, when the votes were cast, it was no surprise that Cruz supporters swept the state convention, just like they swept all of the congressional assemblies.
I feel bad for Trump’s supporters. They were heavily outnumbered and they got almost no support from the Trump campaign. They were confused and frustrated by a series of mistakes on the Trump candidate slate. And he didn’t show. Quite simply, when they needed his help, Trump’s supporters were abandoned by their own candidate.
Trump can try to change the story as much as he likes, but that’s what really happened in Colorado. While not perfect, the process was fair and the campaigns knew the rules ahead of time. To claim otherwise insults the people of Colorado and it’s the opposite of real leadership.
Simon Lomax is a writer and advocate who lives in the Denver suburbs. He was a delegate to the Republican state convention in Colorado. The views expressed are his own. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
