MILWAUKEE — Washington's delegates to the Republican National Convention were gleefully confident as the party Monday nominated Donald Trump for president.
At a morning meeting at a suburban Milwaukee hotel, the delegates prayed for Trump and heard pitches for unity, which they hardly needed, before piling aboard buses for the first day of the convention.
"Trump has gained so much momentum," said state GOP Chair Jim Walsh in a speech to the delegates. That started, he said, even prior to Trump surviving an attempted assassination over the weekend.
"You may have seen in the media the comments that high-level Democrats are basically writing off the presidential campaign. They're conceding that Trump is likely to be elected," Walsh said, to cheers and applause from the room.
"Now don't spike the football before the game is over," Walsh warned, asking supporters to "keep pressing and running hard" through the November election.
Trump has struggled in Washington, losing it by wide margins in 2020 and 2016. He has not appeared in the state since having rallies as a candidate eight years ago.
But local Republicans are looking to raise cash from Washington donors to demonstrate more support for Trump this year — including with an early August fundraiser in Clyde Hill headlined by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, said Hossein Khorram, an apartment developer who is leading fundraising for the Trump campaign in Washington.
"We will need to get Donald Trump reelected and we're gonna do so by raising a million dollars in Washington state in the next three months," Khorram told delegates at their morning meeting.
Brenda Milewski of Puyallup, a first-time Republican delegate, said in an interview she backs Trump "because he's a man for the people."
"President Trump has offered to bring our identity back as the United States of America. I believe our identity is being stripped away based on a lot of politics that took away who we are as a people," she said.
Milewski, 64, said she and her husband are military retirees who have lived in the state for more than two decades. She got involved in Republican politics because it aligns with their values, including biblical principles.
She and the other 43 delegates from Washington cast their votes making Trump officially the GOP nominee later in the day as part of the official convention roll call of the states.
In the convention at the Fiserv Forum, delegates periodically broke out into chants of "fight! fight! fight!" — echoing Trump's defiant shouts after he arose bloodied from the attempt on his life this weekend.
At a tightly scripted convention aimed at showcasing unity behind Trump, efforts were afoot Monday to ensure no one spoiled the show.
Walsh told delegates at the morning meeting he'd received a phone call from the Trump campaign warning they "had some intel" that some Washington delegates were planning on disrupting things by making surprise floor motions to object to parts of the GOP platform. (Some anti-abortion activists have been upset that the platform, which says states are free to impose abortion restrictions but does not call for a federal ban, isn't taking a harder line.)
"You can always participate in the convention how you wish," Walsh said. "But I want to convey to you that the campaign wants today to go smooth."
Later in the afternoon at the convention hall, the platform was adopted as proposed with no debate.
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