In the lobby of a downtown building here, the security guard had stopped inquiring about names or destinations. “You going up to 1615?” he asked, pointing at an elevator. “Everybody’s going to 1615.”
That’s because up on the 16th floor, in a temporarily rented office, was Delegates Unbound, one of the nerve centers of the rebel movement against Donald Trump. Volunteers with phones stuck to their ears jockeyed for a quiet office, looked over the latest delegate counts, and hunted for food among piles of takeout boxes. The media never stopped calling.
That’s over now. The fight to unseat Donald Trump as the Republican nominee was the last, great unknown of next week’s GOP convention. Its outcome was decided Thursday night, as it collapsed under the overwhelming might of Republican National Committee power brokers.
The makings of potential fireworks began Thursday evening, when a GOP committee voted down a proposal to add a “conscience clause” to the convention rules. It would have freed delegates to vote for their preferred candidate on the first ballot. The clause had been the goal for months now of Free the Delegates, a group led by Kendal Unruh, an activist and Colorado delegate. To force a floor vote on a conscience clause by the full convention next week, Ms. Unruh needed one quarter of the rules committee (28 delegates). She didn’t get it, thanks to last-minute RNC deal making.