Delegates Are Worried

What GOP Delegates Are Worried About This Election

11 of Trump's most committed supporters discuss mail-in voting, postelection unrest and what happens if Trump loses.

By CATHERINE KIM

With less than 40 days until Americans vote, tensions around the election are running high, from fears of violence to worries about the basic integrity of Election Day. Will all voters really get a fair shot? How are the incendiary politics of race, the pandemic and the Supreme Court raising the stakes? And—perhaps top of mind for many people this week—if Donald Trump unilaterally declares a loss unfair, as he’s threatening to do, will rank-and-file Republicans accept the result, or line up behind him to fight it?

Many Republican leaders have distanced themselves from Trump’s comments and promised a peaceful transition of power. But how about the party’s base? To get a window into those questions, POLITICO Magazine gathered a highly subjective but important focus group: 11 delegates to the Republican National Convention, in states from Pennsylvania to Hawaii, who we’d previously sounded out for their views on the first virtual convention. What are they worried about? What’s a “fair” election in their view? What worries them about a Joe Biden win—and are they prepared to accept that result?

“For me to be convinced that Biden has won, I would have to know that he was ahead on election night,” said Barbara Bowie-Whitman, a delegate from Virginia. “Monkeying around with late counted mailed in ballots will not be convincing that there has been an honest election. Democrat-controlled states continue to change the rules for counting. And states allowing ballots to count if they are received well after the election reeks of fraud.”

Many of them share similar concerns leading up to the election: They’re worried about the rise in aggressive protests and see Trump as the candidate who can bring law and order to the country. Only one of the 11 interviewees said they planned to vote by mail, with most defending the president’s assertion that mail-in voting is fraudulent.

“My mailman knows what party I am. He knows what candidate I support,” says AL Frenzel, a Hawaii delegate. “If I were to put my ballot in the mailbox, there’s no guarantee it’s going to arrive to the post office. So I need to carry it to the ballot voting collection areas and make sure it gets deposited because I just can’t trust the system.”

All but one said they fear a surge of violence on the left if Trump wins again. “I don’t want any violence. I don’t want any destruction of your own country, your own neighborhood,” says Gary Grisafi, a Trump delegate in Philadelphia. And, if Biden wins, he adds: “[Trump supporters] are not going to go out and loot their own city, loot their own country. They’re not going to disrupt anything. They’re just going to be unhappy.”

The following comments from the delegates on eight important topics are lightly edited for clarity and length.

I.

Accepting, or not, the results of the election

Trump hasn’t committed to peacefully stepping down if he loses, instead raising the issue of voter fraud. “We’re going to have to see what happens,” the president said on Wednesday during a White House news briefing. “You know, I’ve been complaining about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster.” None of the delegates interviewed said they wouldn’t support Biden if he becomes president—though they worry that Democrats won’t be able to accept a Trump win.

Ralph Smith (63, Florida): What other person has been asked, “Are you going to willingly step down?” They never asked anybody that ridiculous question. They didn’t ask Obama. They didn’t ask Bush. And you know why they didn’t ask them? Because it’s inappropriate. Because it’s stupid. They assume because he’s a showman, a business guy, not a Mitt Romney/George Bush type of politician, that he’s some sort of crazy man.

Barbara Bowie-Whitman (79, Virginia): One has to remember the first debate in 2016 when Trump did not commit to support the eventual Republican nominee if he did not prevail in becoming the nominee. This is his style, but it does not mean he would not accept a convincing Biden victory.

Smith: When Trump became the nominee, I began to read that book he wrote about 30 years ago, The Art of the Deal. Read it. If you read that you’ll understand that about 90 percent of what that guy says doesn’t make sense. It’s all misdirection.

Gary Grisafi (56, Pennsylvania): This is happening now, fraud! In Pennsylvania, they found military ballots in the trash, mostly for Trump. How many Trump votes will disappear? This fraud is also happening in other states.

AL Frenzel (63, Hawaii): What I hear the president saying is he is not going to allow an illegitimate or illegal transfer of power. He, like the rest of sane America, wants the people’s will to decide who serves the next four years. The people’s will—not ballot harvesters, not ballot fabricators, not vote buyers, not illegal votes, not dead people's votes, not stolen ballot votes, not anyone’s vote who doesn’t legally have the right to vote. I frankly don’t understand what is so complicated about the president wanting a free and fair election.

Don Huizenga (55, Minnesota): I know President Trump is but one man in our government. I know we have an Electoral College system that is about as foolproof a system as exists in the world. I know that America has had peaceful transfers of power under the longest living Constitution on earth despite whatever trials and tribulations exist, some worse than what we see today. I know that the media will spin whatever they can against conservative presidents. I know elections are certified by the state.

I believe that the election might be challenged, but there are enough people involved to draw the correct and true outcome out of it. I know conservatives will accept the outcome that follows the research. I know that liberal minds will not.

Joseph Buckner (20, North Carolina): I think the burden of proof is on the Democrats to show that they will peacefully accept four more years of a Trump administration. Republicans believe in law and order and that elections should be decided in a lawful, transparent manner.

II.

What makes an election fair?

Accepting an election result means agreeing on its integrity—and as the pandemic changes the way Americans cast ballots, many are concerned that voting integrity is at risk, whether from shuttered polling places, delayed mail-in ballots or the fraud and chicanery the president alleges.

Michael Albrecht (19, Washington): If I define a fair election it’d be one person who is registered to vote casting one vote for one election.

Bubba McDonald (81, Georgia): One vote, one person.

Buckner: An election that’s transparent, orderly and follows the laws. I think that we have good election laws on the books.

Bowie-Whitman: Nobody is allowed to vote who shouldn’t be voting. And everybody who should, who is entitled to vote, does get to vote and get it counted.

Frenzel: Well, a fair election is where every voter gets a chance to vote once. Every legitimate voter. And that that vote be verified by an ID card either in the absentee ballot process or at the poll.

Albrecht: I think most people of all races have IDs. [Editor’s note: Seven percent of the U.S. population doesn’t have a photo ID, and there’s a stark racial discrepancy: While only 5 percent of white voters have no confirmed ID, 10 percent of Hispanic voters and 13 percent of Black voters don’t have photo IDs] And so I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a driver’s license or a passport or whatever they need to vote. I think most people who claim that there’s voter suppression are more sour about the results.

Huizenga: A fair election is an election where people on both sides of the aisle have faith that the election system has integrity and they can live with and support the decision after the election.

III.

Threats to the election

Voting rights experts have estimated the risk of voter fraud to be low. In the 2016 and 2018 general election, officials found that only 0.0025 percent of the ballots casted by mail were instances of double voting or voting on behalf of a deceased person. Then again, no election has ever been held under the unusual circumstances of 2020 that has sparked an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots. The strange logistics of this particular election has Republicans skeptical: Forty-three percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents identified voter fraud as a “major problem” in mail-balloting.

Kim Coleman (53, Utah): In my state, our mail-in ballot dates keep moving. And if people are not aware of that, then that may disenfranchise people who are not aware of a deadline to submit their ballot. I don’t mean to imply cheating or anything nefarious. I just mean the logistics of it. Do voters have a clear understanding of when their ballot needs to be in the mail to be postmarked on time? I’m not sure that’s going to be the case for a lot of people.

Frenzel: It scares most of us to death, that these last-minute changes in tried-and-true election procedures are being manipulated.

Bowie-Whitman: My biggest concern is fraudulent voting by people who don’t exist, such as the ballots we know have been mailed out to cats and dogs in certain states. [Editor’s note: Trump made similar claims on Aug. 10 that half a million absentee ballots were sent to dead people and pets. His statement, however, was proven to be a misunderstanding: The Center for Voter Information, a national voter registration group, had sent absentee ballot applications to about 2.2 million voters, but accidentally sent out 500,000 with the wrong return address due to a printing error. Deb Wake, president of the League of Women Voters Virginia, later appeared on radio to say she heard one person say that a dead person and a pet each received an application, although the Center for Voter Information denies the claims. Some publications soon picked up the news with misleading headlines that “dead people and pets” received applications.] The ability of some states to just blanket mail to all kinds of addresses provides untold opportunities for fraudulent voting.

In press coverage, generally, it’s totally distorted because they think we don’t want absentee ballots. Absentee ballots are things you have to apply for and they have to verify that you really are a voter and you’re really entitled to that. That’s just fine. But the idea of broadcasting ballots to the population at large is a very bad one and a very dangerous world.

Albrecht: Obviously, you see a big push by Democrats to rush to mail-in voting. I live in the state of Washington. We do have mail-in voting. And it works. I got to give my secretary of state credit for that—Kim Wyman—because they’ve spent years, probably a decade, working on mail-in voting to make sure it’s a secure and safe election. I can’t say the same for other states. It takes time and it takes a lot of work and money to make it happen.

Grisafi: Democrats, they have the science down on how they could cheat. We have to get candidates and their lawyers to gather up people, to go and watch the process. There has to be something that we are allowed to do, or for the election boards to allow us to have a watcher in there. We have to watch the process. We’re just outnumbered so much.

Albrecht: It sounds a little conspiratorial, I realize that. But you could throw out ballots that you don’t agree with. I see that as a threat to an election.

Ken Reid (61, Virginia): In Virginia, the Democratic Assembly got rid of voter ID cards. So, you know, that’s been a major concern for many, many years because you have a lot of folks who are not legal residents of the United States who can show up and vote. [Editor’s note: There’s no evidence that noncitizen voting is widespread. A New York Times survey found only two possible incidents of noncitizens voting in 2016 out of a total of 137.7 million voters.]

If you’re asking me if I think Vladimir Putin is going to interfere with the election, I don’t think that is going to happen. And then if he does, again, it’s not going to amount to a hill of beans because it didn’t amount to a hill of beans in 2016 by the concern of the Democrats.

Adrienne Pena-Garza (41, Texas): There have been issues here in the valley with election fraud. People would say like, “I was paid $30 to go vote.” And I have asked, can we videotape you saying that. They won’t do that. They won’t expose it, but they know it’s there. I’m not saying everyone’s that way, but it’s hard to put a lot of faith in the election process when you do know that these things do occur.

Smith: I think both sides are making a bigger deal out of it than it necessarily is or should be. As I said, I trust the vast majority of the supervisors of elections in every county, in every state. There might be a few corrupt ones, but I don’t think it’s going to change the results of the national election anyway.

Frenzel: It’s not difficult to figure out how to vote. If [voters] are not smart enough to figure out how to vote, they probably shouldn’t vote. But I’m certain that anyone who wants to cast their vote is going to be able to do so regardless of party.

Reid: I just don’t think that this fraud business is going to be really paramount. I think the key thing is whether people are going to turn out. And the most important thing is going to be those swing states.

IV.

Voting in-person vs. mail-in voting

The risk of Covid-19 has prompted many states to make it easier for voters to send in mail-in ballots, and now at least 84 percent of Americans can vote by mail. Trump, however, has repeatedly said this could lead to Democrats rigging the election against him. As a result, a huge partisan split has opened in the willingness to vote by mail: In one poll , only 21 percent of Republicans said they would vote by mail, compared to 40 percent of Democrats. (Studies have found that mail-in voting doesn’t have a strong partisan effect on the results of an election one way or the other.)

Albrecht: I always vote by mail. It is very convenient in our state. They actually pay for the postage too. So you can drop in any mailbox and they’ll go, and you’re able to track your vote online. I think in-person voting will have to be standard for this year’s election, but for states who have been doing mail-in voting for at least two election cycles, I would say they’ve got somewhat of a handle on it. I’m not all doom and gloom.

Buckner: I’m going to go there in person and I’ll do early voting, so I’ll probably work the polls on Election Day. I’d really like to see my ballot go into the box.

Bowie-Whitman: I do something which is a procedure known in Virginia as voting absentee in person. For many, many years because I served in the foreign service, I had to vote absentee from abroad. You just crossed your fingers and hoped your vote counted.

Frenzel: I will go to the poll because they do accommodate the physical walk-ins. I’m a high-risk person with three high-risk category issues. I will take the necessary precautions, and I’m not concerned about my safety right now.

Buckner: If we can go to the grocery store, we can vote and participate in our democracy in person.

Smith: I enjoy going down and voting. I would probably do it early because I don’t like the lines.

Huizenga: I’ll be voting in person. I want the confidence of knowing. And I think a lot of people on both sides of the aisle want the confidence more than they want the convenience. There should be an effort to voting, and a person should want to know that they literally marked a ballot and they saw it go in the machine.

Pena-Garza: Ever since I turned of age, my dad taught me how important it is to cast my ballot. I want to make sure that I’m participating because it’s the freedom that we have here that we shouldn’t take for granted. So I’m going to go in with bells on. I’m excited to do so.

V.

The Supreme Court

The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg less than 50 days before the election has lit a partisan bonfire in Congress. Sen. Mitch McConnell intends to vote on Trump’s nominee, which would give the court a 6-3 conservative majority, despite refusing to consider an election-year nominee from President Barack Obama in 2016. Will Republican voters see the push for a new Supreme Court justice as an act of hypocrisy—or be even more motivated to back Trump? (The following discussion was had before the president named Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee on Saturday.)

Coleman: The American people elected this Republican-majority Senate with the understanding they may be tasked with confirming multiple justices nominated by President Trump. The people have already spoken on this matter. I expect the Senate to do its job. It is wrong to ask them not to.

Reid: I think the president should nominate a female—I like Neomi Rao, who is an appellate judge—and have the FBI begin their background investigation. The hearings and vote should be after the election. This will enable time for the nominee to be vetted in the media and by Congress and the FBI.

I fully understand the Democrats do not like this but I believe that if they controlled the White House and Senate, even in an election year, they would be pushing to get a nominee on the court before the new Congress and president take office in January.

Huizenga: The last three decisions by the court were Democrat wins. They were good decisions, but the idea that the left can’t get good judgments from a conservative bench is nonsense.

Coleman: Court appointments are always a primary consideration for me and a big reason I voted for President Trump. Having this choice in close proximity to the election may highlight this presidential duty even more for more people. President Trump is now polling in the lead [in Utah], and I think it will be very positive for President Trump to have fresh public discourse on the impacts of the high court and the importance of its composition.

Grisafi: Elections have consequences. Trump did win. If it would have been Clinton and a Democratic Senate, they would nominate and do the process very quickly. I hope this would not be the only subject they talk about until Election Day.

VI.

Key issues

What’s the most important issue for Republicans heading into November? Elections usually turn on the economy, but that’s only one of the crises the country faces right now.

Pena-Garza: [Immigration] is such a controversial topic—being Hispanic, supporting Border Patrol. I’m hoping that by us sharing what it’s like to live here on the southern border, which I like to call the South Pole of Texas, you know that there’s a different viewpoint. And hopefully to give some insight to other people about what some of these really good people go through, because a lot of the rhetoric is not true.

Albrecht: What’s been on the top of my mind ever since a couple of months ago when I saw Minneapolis burning down was Black Lives Matter protests.

The whole idea that all cops are bastards, that they’re part of a systemic evil group, that it should be wiped away, that it is just a faceless group that doesn’t care about Black Americans or matters in general—it’s just a sad lie that’s been pushed by many people of my age. I’m 19. Many of my peers, they fall for it. And it’s really sad because I believe police officers serve and protect. The majority of them do.

Bowie-Whitman: I’ve been paying attention intensely to the violence—propagated and paid for by a hardcore Marxist organization and group. I do not believe any of this was spontaneous, and I think very little of it has anything to do with racial justice. It is an organized effort to promote chaos and make sure Trump is blamed for it. [Editor’s note: Although one of Black Lives Matter’s three co-founders described herself as a “trained Marxist,” experts say it’s unrealistic to tie the entire movement to one political ideology when it is broadly supported by 50 percent of American voters. Similarly, although extremists on both the left and right have exploited the peaceful protests, there’s little evidence protesters were hired to cause chaos.]

Grisafi: I don’t care if it’s three businesses that were vandalized and looted. It’s three businesses that are small businesses. I’m also a business owner, so I know how it is to have things taken from you and destroyed.

Frenzel: The only issue that’s on my mind are these constant, relentless, despicable, vicious attacks on the candidate. This bothers me more than anything. You know, if he was given half a chance by the media, then he would be automatically reelected, because he can stand on his record. I am obviously concerned about law and order. But I tie the law and order issue in with the mainstream media. The mainstream media is feeding these events. It’s publicizing them. It’s glamorizing them. It’s giving these people credit when they should actually be in jail.

Huizenga: I think the biggest problem America has right now is that we have a government from, you know, top to bottom that is literally violating the civil rights of Americans on a daily basis with the excuse that public health is somehow magically the one and only important thing that trumps all constitutional rights. The [state] government overreacted to the virus.

I think one of the concerns for political insiders is that Biden will use the federal government to change laws, to give the federal government even more control.

Coleman: We’re seeing too many businesses announcing that they are closing for good.

Reid: The issue that’s most important to me is getting the economy back to where it was with Trump and what the Republicans did to create one of the best economies in years. I mean, it’s the Democratic governors who have destroyed the economy, not Trump.

Buckner: I need an economy that will provide me a job for when I graduate. I think that’s the most important topic for any college student. And the choice is a person who was vice president over one of our slowest recovery periods, or the man who has created record stock markets, record job growth, very low unemployment. That’s really pulling me to the polls, because I know that this pandemic has been hard on people. But there’s a man who’s proven himself that he can do it and bring us out of it. And that’s Donald Trump.

VII.

Violence post-election

Some experts who monitor extremist groups have expressed their concerns about a potential rise in right-wing violence if Trump loses. These delegates, however, think the violence is more likely to come from those on the left.

Reid: I would be very concerned if Trump won again. And I don’t think I’d be walking around with my MAGA hat.

Buckner: I’m scared to even wear a Trump T-shirt on my college campus because of how people view the president.

Bowie-Whitman: I think there will probably be less violence if [Trump] loses, because the left will have won and they’ll be happy. And that’s the objective of this violence, just to make sure that he does not win. Because they want to intimidate us.

Reid: I don’t think conservatives are going to be out there smashing windows, looting and rioting. I think at some point there may be a revival of some kind of Tea Party kind of resistance.

Huizenga: I think if Trump wins again the tension will be more inflamed. But I think, like the Civil War, it’s a tension that needs to run itself out. And so, personally, I’m willing to go through that process in order to start some real healing.

Grisafi: I don’t want any violence. I don’t want any destruction of your own country, your own neighborhood. I mean, some of these people in West Philly, when they looted that area and set fires, they did it to their own neighborhood. They did it to their own brothers and sisters. They did it to their neighbors.

Coleman: I’m very concerned about what I see on the streets of some cities. But I’m hopeful. I’m always hopeful that America always has in the past come together to continue to become a better America. I hope that we are able to see a peaceful transition of power, if there is a transition, or a more peaceful continuation of power.

VIII.

Imagining a Trump loss

The GOP delegates support Trump for a number of reasons: He’s helped the economy, supports law and order, and maintains an America-first mindset. All that could be lost if Biden ends up winning in November, they say—but they’d accept his presidency. They just wouldn’t be happy about it, and some who live in liberal states say they may even plan to move.

Reid: I’m fully prepared to support the new president and not lead some kind of resistance organization. I was in government and I understand that you have to work with people to get things done or to keep governments from getting big.

Frenzel: God help us. I hope he doesn’t lose. But I, frankly, would probably leave Hawaii—this liberal, left-wing Marxist state—and relocate in a red state where I can have safety and people that actually understand what America is about and what it is to be American first.

Huizenga: I would honestly consider moving from the state of Minnesota to like Tennessee, Kentucky, somewhere south. My wife and I have already talked about it. We’ve been here for like 30 years. The state of Minnesota is that the government here is a nightmare. People like me just have to decide, do I want to live here and continue to suffer the consequences of it?

I think you’ll see the biggest migration of wealth moving out of Democrat strongholds into more conservative states and we’ll have an even more divisive country.

Smith: Back when President Clinton won in ’92, I remember a friend of mine was saying, “Well, there goes the country. We had eight years of Reagan and four years of Bush, and now we’re stuck with this crazy guy from Arkansas.” Who knew what would happen? Nothing. I don’t think the world will end on either side.

Pena-Garza: I would be disappointed. I have a vision in my head: the Statue of Liberty, and she’s crying, her head down in shame. She represents freedom for me.

Reid: The thing about Biden is that he’s kind of a Trojan horse for these radicals. He’s not going to be able to stand up to the radicals who are going to want positions in the administration, in the bureaucracy.

Buckner: It just makes me shudder to my core thinking about my future. It would really be a Kamala Harris presidency, not a Joe Biden presidency. You can theoretically see a [Chuck] Schumer control of the Senate, Nancy Pelosi keeping the gavel. I would be scared to see a country with them at the helm.

Albrecht: I don’t see Joe Biden as a huge threat to the social progress we’ve made or any policy progress that we made. But if he’s being influenced by Kamala Harris, who is definitely a left-leaning senator, and people in her circles are running the Joe Biden administration, you’ll definitely see a lot more change. And personally, I think it’s for the worse, so I feel a little uneasy about that.

Grisafi: Every election there’s a winner and a loser. It’s been going on for hundreds of years. So, I mean, I wasn’t too happy that Obama won, but I got up the next day and went to work.

Coleman: I would be disappointed and concerned if President Trump lost. But this is why I also emphasize as a state lawmaker that the counterbalance to the federal government is an individual state sovereignty. We are not a country run by a centralized federal government. So if President Trump loses, we may see some incredible setbacks to advances we made under his presidency. But all is not lost.

McDonald: I’d be concerned for my grandchildren having to grow up in a different America than what we presently have and what I’ve been used to. [Biden] is a puppet on the string for the extreme left.

Bowie-Whitman: I have a life expectancy of about 15 [more] years, and I suppose I can stay hunkered down for another 15 years and grieve for my country. I will be quite miserable if Biden is elected. In past elections, everybody said, “This is the most important election of all time.” And then when the election is over and you’ve lost, you realize that a lot of what was said was to hype people up so they can vote for your side. This time it’s true.