What The Republican Convention Was Like

Randall Knight

I attended my first Republican Party Convention on the 21^st at the Maverick Center in Salt Lake City.  My initiation started off by not being on their list of state delegates.  That required a phone call to Troy Peterson by one of the help desk attendants to verify I was a legal delegate.  Thought it was interesting but glad that I had to show a valid picture government ID to get a voting credential and a wireless clicker to vote for primary candidates.  Especially since there are a lot of states wanting to allow people to vote by showing only utility bills or registering their vehicle with the DMV.

After getting checked in 30 minutes after arrival, I finally found a seat in the Rich County section of the arena.  I didn’t see anybody I knew so I have no idea how many county representatives were there. The section was parallel to the stage so I moved to a better location in the Morgan County area on the first row on a cushioned folding chair. 

There was a vigorous debate on the by-laws and amendment proposal and rules.  This went on for hours with people from the Keep My Vote group opposing every item.  Finally, after 5 hours, somebody proposed these debates be moved to another time and get to the reason why people were there – to vote for the candidates.  The Chairman said there were 4000 delegates present and would use the clickers to cast their votes.  Several people asked questions on how their votes would be validated. They did a sample vote to demonstrate the process.  There were several clickers not being counted and that delayed the process for at least an hour and the problems continued through the whole process. Because of the delays and arguing several people left before the actual counting began.

Each candidate was given 5 minutes to convince the delegates to vote for them.  There was 12 candidates running for the Senate race.  In my opinion 8 candidates should never made it that far.  Their total combined votes were less than 150 with most getting less than 10 votes.  It was obvious to me that Mitt Romney was running solely by his name.  He didn’t specify what he would do if elected.  He basically said the delegates knew who he was and what he stands for.  Mike Kennedy on the other hand went into detail on several main issues facing the nation.  The voting was very close with Kennedy getting 51% and Romney 49%.  I think Romney’s main problem was he didn’t go into detail on what he would do if elected.  His whole platform is solely on Olympic success and name recognition.

Rob Bishop’s race was close.  I would have voted for Chad Fairbanks if there wasn’t so much turmoil going on in congress and if he had lived in Utah more than 4 years.  I feel he would spend the first year settling in and learning his way around. 

Mia Love was unopposed but showed up and gave her 5 minute speech.  It was by far the BEST speech given and for me made the whole experience worthwhile.