Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Monday, March 24, 2025 66° Today's Paper


Hawaii News

Islanders hit Ohio for GOP convention

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Workers in Cleveland erected a sign Sunday as they prepared at Quicken Loans Arena for the Republican National Convention.

Hawaii’s delegates to the Republican National Convention have gathered in Cleveland this week to help adopt a sharply conservative new party platform and to join what they expect will be a grand celebration of the presidential nomination of Donald Trump.

Although there have been concerns about security in and around the convention itself, several of the Hawaii delegates say they are confident the federal and local authorities will be able to maintain order and keep the delegates and any protesters safe.

Hawaii is sending 19 delegates and 19 alternates to the convention, which is expected to attract about 50,000 spectators, delegates, family members and demonstrators to the Cleveland area. That includes about 2,470 delegates, 2,302 alternates and an estimated 15,000 credentialed media members, according to party officials.

An elated Nathan Paikai, chairman of the Hawaii delegation and a leader of the Trump campaign in Hawaii, said he already is having “the time of my life,” adding, “The city is beautiful, the setting is beautiful, the people have a lot of aloha.”

Paikai was a member of the Committee on Rules and Order of Business that met in Cleveland last week to put to rest the controversial idea of “unbinding” delegates for a contested convention in an attempt to replace Trump as the nominee.

“It was all shut down, never to come back,” Paikai said. “It was brought up, it was challenged, it was set down, never to be called back again, and that unbinding, and all that ‘Never Trump’ has died.”

Paikai said he was overwhelmed by the way U.S. House Speaker and convention Chairman Paul Ryan and Trump “humbled themselves to each other, knowing that we have to do it together.”

“We didn’t all agree, but we all agreed we have to come together and we have to unite and we have to fight together,” he said.

When U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas speaks to the convention tonight, “the world will know that we are one, for he will come in and he will share,” Paikai said. “It will silence the fight. It will be done.”

Willes Lee, a delegate from Hawaii who is leading the Cruz delegates from Hawaii, agreed that because the convention won’t be contested, the events this week will be “relatively pro forma.”

“There is no issue anymore with Cruz as a candidate, or him mounting some kind of effort. Ted Cruz clearly understands Donald Trump is the nominee, and that’s done,” Lee said.

Lee, who is also president of a conservative organization called the National Federation of Republican Assemblies, has been in Cleveland for more than a week, watching party officials reshape the national Republican platform and hammer out modifications to the party rules.

The Republican Assemblies organization is “very interested in ensuring we had a conservative platform that represented constitutional conservative positions, and we’re satisfied with the national platform,” Lee said.

In particular, the Republican Assemblies wanted an emphasis on marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and wanted strong language in opposition to abortion, he said.

Conservatives also successfully inserted language into the platform expressing disapproval of homosexuality and transgender rights, issues that more moderate delegates are expected to challenge during the convention debates.

Lee said the outcome of the platform bargaining might help make the rest of the convention run more smoothly this week.

“There are a lot of strong conservatives who are not necessarily satisfied with Donald Trump,” Lee said. “One of the issues they’re faced with is they don’t have an alternative, so some of what we did this week may calm them down because their group had a great say at the meetings this week for the platforms and for the rules.”

Paikai said the national platform draft was labeled as “far right,” but he maintains “it was for the people,” adding, “It was for the goodness of the people of America.”

Lee is a member of the National Rifle Association’s Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, and he joined members of the NRA staff and board members in Cleveland as they monitored the GOP platform discussions to ensure the party maintains its strong support for Second Amendment guarantees of the right to own firearms.

“Every group is different, and we wanted to ensure that nobody diluted that,” Lee said. “The resulting platform, which will be approved on Monday, is still a very strong support of that position on Second Amendment and gun civil rights, so we’re satisfied with that.”

Hawaii delegate Peter Di Rocco said he is “very much” concerned about the threat of violence at the convention and the safety of the delegates, observers and protesters, based on media reports.

Di Rocco said he is confident the federal authorities have a good handle on crowd control and will minimize disruptions, but he is less sure about the local authorities.

“After all, if I’m not mistaken, Cleveland is a Democrat town,” he said. “I’m not sure there will be a lot of love for Republicans.”

Lee said security was being increased throughout last week, and he predicted a basically orderly convention. “I don’t anticipate any issue that the security can’t handle,” he said.

The Hawaii group includes many first-time delegates, and for those who are worried about security or the possibility of violence in the week ahead, Lee said he reminds them of the unsettled Republican convention in New York in 2004.

The memory of the World Trade Center attacks was still raw that year, and the United States was engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, “and a lot of people didn’t like that, and we were completely safe,” Lee said.

“I anticipate that the Secret Service and the Cleveland police will have complete control on this to allow the visitors and protesters on both sides to interact in a peaceful manner,” he said.

18 responses to “Islanders hit Ohio for GOP convention”

  1. bsdetection says:

    The lede in an editorial today by Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post’s ultra-conservative columnist: “As we head to Cleveland today, we certainly have been reminded that the GOP electorate picked someone as its nominee who is not only unfit to govern but entirely incapable of running a national campaign.”

    • lespark says:

      Everyone is entitled to their opinion. That’s what makes America Great Again.

      • bumbai says:

        Trumppence? Sounds like some old British coin.

      • choyd says:

        That’s true. But that doesn’t mean we elect a candidate who openly hates the Constitution and has hated it for decades.

        It is morbidly amusingly to watch those who decry Obama’s alleged disregard for the Constitution back Trump who is openly against many of the civil liberties enshrined in that very document.

        • lespark says:

          Crooked Hilliary is a phony. She’s making a speech to the NAACP yet she was the one who coined the term Super Predator.
          Is Hillary Clinton really the kind of candidate who will rally progressives and the black community behind her when she refers to urban youth as “super predators” with “no conscience, no empathy”?

        • lespark says:

          Explain please. What civil liberties are you talking about. He is a private citizen and has nothing to do with anybody’s civil liberties. You are barking up the wrong tree.

        • Paulh808 says:

          ALLEGED, LOL

        • allie says:

          Agree..Trump is in no way qualified to be President. He is scary bad.

        • choyd says:

          lespark, I realize you are a one trick pony, but really, have you missed my dozens of posts where I stated I’m voting Johnson?

          Are you really that ill equipped to handle a debate where your opponent’s candidate isn’t Hillary?

          Is your inventory so depleted that you cannot cite a single reason to vote for Trump on his own merits?

        • choyd says:

          “Are you really that ill equipped to handle a debate where your opponent’s candidate isn’t Hillary?

          Is your inventory so depleted that you cannot cite a single reason to vote for Trump on his own merits?”

          Clearly, the answer to both questions is a loud, “YES.”

  2. bsdetection says:

    In opposition to Republican foreign policy orthodoxy, the new Republican platform won’t call for supplying weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, thanks to the efforts of Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who worked as a lobbyist for the Russian-backed former Ukrainian president for more than a decade. As soon as the convention is over, Trump and Manafort will receive a daily national security briefing very similar to that given to the President. I wonder how the CIA feels about giving a top secret briefing to someone who works for both Trump and Putin.

  3. nomu1001 says:

    If you missed it, you might want to watch the last episode of 60 minutes and the interview with Trump and his VP running mate.

  4. justmyview371 says:

    Strong conservatives are never satisfied with anything.

Leave a Reply