Elections

Trump Fundraiser Resigns After Delegate Vote Skip

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Phillip Stucky Political Reporter
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Former North Dakota GOP Chairman and current fundraiser for the joint RNC- Trump fundraising team Gary Emineth resigned in disgust Monday after the Republican Party denied a floor vote on the motion proposed by the Never Trump movement.

“I was on the Trump finance committee and I just resigned because that bully tactic is absurd,”  Emineth told The Hill. “I just texted them right now. Why can’t the people be heard? I’ve been texting Reince for 10 minutes. He said we didn’t have the votes. We had 10, 11 states. They peeled people back. They were calling delegations asking people to step off the committee. You don’t do this in America. You do this in other countries.”

Emineth resigned immediately during his text conversation with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. Emineth later told The Hill he was angry over the Republican Party working together with the Trump campaign to silence people on the floor of the convention.

Free the Delegates is the key group that orchestrated the effort to pass the motion that would enable delegates to choose how they wanted to vote on the first ballot of the convention vote Thursday. Officials from the movement told reporters they obtained more than the needed number of signatures needed in order to pass a floor vote.

The group announced Sunday they planned on attacking on multiple fronts. Free the Delegates worked together with a similar group called Delegates unbound to develop a network of delegates who could be mobilized at any time.

The last strategy left to the Never Trump movement is to convince enough delegates to skip the vote, ensuring that Trump doesn’t earn enough votes on the first ballot of the convention. Delegates are able to vote any way they choose if the first ballot fails to produce a candidate.

Republican officials dispute those claims, asserting the group only submitted signatures from representatives from 9 states, and that many of those signatories removed their signatures after confrontation by party officials. The official count by the party resulted in only six states signed the petition, meaning the motion could be ignored.

“If that’s how they’re doing the Republican Party, they can have it,” Emineth said, going on to demand Preibus’ resignation.

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