Mike Lee, tea party senator, may help decide Trump’s fate at convention

Source: Yahoo News | July 12, 2016 | Jon Ward

CLEVELAND — This week, watch Mike Lee.

The mild-mannered first-term U.S. senator from Utah will arrive here Wednesday night or Thursday morning to cast a significant vote in the long-odds battle being waged by some Republican delegates to snatch the party’s presidential nomination from Donald Trump.

Lee, 45, is one of Utah’s two members on the convention Rules Committee, which will vote at the end of the week on a motion to unbind the 2,472 convention delegates next week. If the committee sends the resolution to the convention floor, the whole convention would vote up or down on the measure.

The obstacles facing the dump-Trump effort are high. Multiple Trump campaign officials said Tuesday their whip count indicated that the “conscience clause” would not get out of Rules, and that if it did, it would lose on the convention floor. There were no signs of nervousness in the Trump whip operation, one said.

Allies of the dump-Trump effort are more optimistic that the Rules Committee might pass the measure to the full convention, but less hopeful about their chances there. In addition, other observers of the process think that delegates trying to send the convention to multiple ballots by having a few hundred delegates abstain from voting on the first ballot is the better strategy.

Nonetheless, if the Rules Committee does keep the issue alive by sending the conscience clause to the floor of the convention, it could take on life in a way that’s hard to predict.

And Lee is at the heart of this battle. His support for or against the conscience clause proposal will send a powerful signal to those among the other 111 members of the Rules Committee who are wavering. Lee’s wife, Sharon — who, like her husband, was chosen by the other Utah delegates to represent them on the committee — is believed likely to follow his lead, so his decision could swing two votes of the 28 required to bring the motion to the floor. One member of the Rules Committee said many members believe that Lee’s support could be crucial.

A spokesman for Lee said Tuesday that the senator has made up his mind how he will vote and will share his decision with other members of the committee this week.

“Everyone’s lobbying him,” said a senior Trump campaign official.

So far, Lee has been tightlipped about his intentions. There are plenty of reasons, however, why he would vote against Trump on this issue.

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