Republicans end convention’s first day with floor fight, high emotions

CLEVELAND — As Republicans became fully engaged in their 2016 national convention in the Quicken Loans Arena Monday, delegates and protesters alike witnessed unprecedented security measures. Delegates at the convention, which will continue through Thursday, were expected to nominate Donald Trump as the party’s nominee for November’s presidential race Tuesday.

State Rep. Ed Rynders, R-Leesburg, is a GOP delegate at the convention and has agreed to provide The Herald periodic updates and photos from the convention floor, as well as outside of the arena.

“From the convention itself, the emotion from the delegation was real,” Rynders said. “The speakers were powerful, especially Pat Smith, who lost her son, Sean, in Benghazi. That was gut-wrenching. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. The most powerful, by far, and you could feel the electricity in the air, was the speech given by (former New York Mayor) Rudy Giuliani. He talked about America coming together and that Blue Lives Matter. He said, ‘We’re not white or black Americans. What happened to that?’ He really had the crowd going.”

The convention erupted earlier in the day when Trump opponents inside his party stormed out of the room and others chanted, in a failed attempt to force a vote opposing his candidacy.

The turmoil threatened efforts by the Trump campaign to show the party had united behind him and distracted from the day’s theme of “Make America Safe Again.”

“I’ve seen the national press describe a convention in chaos, and I really think that was a poor description,” Rynders said. “There was a motion from the floor for a roll call and it failed because, I think, the anti-Trump forces didn’t have the votes and it was an over-in-five-minutes kinda thing.”

The anti-Trump forces wanted to change the party’s nominating rules to allow delegates to support alternative Republican candidates over Trump.

Party leaders held a voice vote, then declared the opponents lacked enough support, triggering pandemonium on the floor of the Cleveland basketball arena, where Trump is due to be formally nominated for the Nov. 8 election.

“This entire system is rigged to force the vote for Donald Trump,” said Kendal Unruh, a delegate from Colorado.

Trump’s son and adviser, Donald Trump Jr., threatened the leaders of the attempted revolt, saying, “Your careers are finished” in a message posted on Twitter.

While delivering a jolt to the highly scripted program, the rebellion by the anti-Trump forces was quashed.

The program took another jolt late Monday night after accusations of plagiarism in a speech by Donald Trump’s wife stole the spotlight just when the party was hoping to focus on the formal anointing of her businessman husband as its White House nominee.

Melania Trump’s address to the convention, an effort to soften her husband’s image, contained a section that was strikingly similar to words delivered at the Democratic convention in 2008 by the woman she hopes to succeed as U.S. first lady, Michelle Obama.

As critics accused her of lifting passages from that speech, a Trump campaign official suggested the similarity was the result of an error by Melania Trump’s speech writers. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said he would probably fire the writer if that were the case.

“Everybody thought she did what she needed to do and explained the relationship that they have and maybe what we don’t see she knows,” Priebus said. “Doing the right things and his compassion. She’s not a public speaker, and this was the first time most people had a chance to hear her speak. Everybody thought she did a good job in delivering (the speech).”

Ryders brushed off the plagiarism accusation.

“There has been very little discussion about that; we’ll let the campaigns handle that,” he said.

The controversy, however, raised questions about the Trump campaign’s attention to detail as he squares off against the larger, more organized operation of Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

“The overall message yesterday was generally about security, both domestic and foreign,” Rynders said. “That was the theme of yesterday, and I thought the message was delivered quite well.”

Rueters contributed to this report.