CLEVELAND – New Mexico’s delegation to the Republican National Convention held firm in support of Donald Trump on Monday afternoon as other states with a majority of anti-Trump delegates demanded a roll call vote on moving to replace him as the party’s nominee.
The “Dump Trump” contingent could not muster a needed majority of nine states’ delegates to force a roll call vote to move forward with the maneuver. In the end, the anti-Trump delegates could only muster a majority in six states, and New Mexico was not among them.
“I think that would have been a bad idea,” delegate Harvey Yates, a former chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, told the Journal on the floor of the convention after the raucous standoff ended. “We are a bottom-up party.”
None of New Mexico’s 24 delegates or 21 alternates expressed any desire – publicly, anyway – for the New Mexico delegation to join the movement to replace Trump with another candidate.
Samuel LeDoux, a delegate from Santa Fe, said that Trump wasn’t his first choice in the Republican primary election but that he is rallying around the New York businessman because he prefers him to Hillary Clinton, who is expected to be officially nominated by the Democratic Party in Philadelphia next week.
“He wants to increase national security and border security, and if we increase border security it will increase wages of Latino people who live in the state because their wages won’t be dragged down by the shadow economy” fueled by illegal immigration, LeDoux said.
The New Mexico delegation is staying at Hampton Inn & Suites in Middleburg, Ohio, about 15 minutes from downtown Cleveland by car. The delegation has a busy week ahead. They have three luncheons scheduled over the next three days: one at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame today, another at the Cleveland Zoo on Wednesday and a third at the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Thursday.
