Republicans are flocking to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to choose their party’s presidential nominee, and 74 people from North Carolina will be part of that process.
The North Carolina Republican Party is sending 42 people to represent the state’s 14 congressional districts and 29 at-large delegates, as well as the state party’s chairman, committeeman and committeewoman. They will cast the votes that are expected to officially make former President Donald Trump and his running mate the party’s nominees for president and vice president.
The NCGOP has released a partial list of the delegates attending the national convention, which will be July 15 to 18.
That includes A.J. Daoud, a native North Carolinian living in Pilot Mountain, who owns a multimillion-dollar funeral business. He formerly served as chairman of the state lottery commission and has held numerous leadership positions within the state party.
“I felt very honored to be elected by the NCGOP statewide, as a whole, along with our prominent leaders like Sen. Ted Budd,” Daoud said.
Daoud said the process of choosing delegates starts in each county and goes to the district, state and national levels.
The Republican National Convention starts Monday. What should NC voters know?
Who gets chosen as delegates?
Three of the delegates are automatic: Chairman Jason Simmons, Committeeman Ed Broyhill and Committeewoman Kyshia Lineberger.
Then three people from each of the state’s 14 districts are selected to serve as delegates.
Finally, another 29 people are selected at-large.
All 72 delegates also come with alternates in case something happens and they have to leave the convention. This year, Daoud said, the NCGOP did something new and created a second list of alternates.
“In ‘16, particularly, there were people coming to Cleveland who just showed up for one day and then left,” Daoud said. “So if the delegate leaves, then the alternate comes up.”
This time, they’re prepared, though he said party leaders think it’s less likely because of the distance between Wisconsin and North Carolina. Delegates are traveling farther than they did in 2016 for the convention in Cleveland.
“So you have three lists that have been created,” Daoud said. “You have the delegates list, the alternates list and then you have the backup alternates.”
NCGOP published the list of at-large delegates and their alternates online, but have not made publicly available the rest of the names. Party spokesman Matt Mercer provided another 12 previously unannounced names of delegates to McClatchy, along with repeat names and alternates. He noted it was the longest list he planned to compile.
That means only 44 of the 72 delegates’ names have been released at the time of publication.
The known names include Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, House Speaker Tim Moore, U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, state Sen. Brad Overcash and state Rep. Kyle Hall.
Alternates include some of North Carolina’s congressional candidates, like Laurie Buckhout, Brad Knott, Mark Harris and Addison McDowell.
Daoud said until 2015, the NCGOP chairperson chose the at-large delegates.
Now, an at-large selection committee accepts applications and makes recommendations to the chairman, who then signs off on the names and brings it before the state convention for the body to approve.
Daoud said often an elected official’s busy schedule keeps them from attending district conventions, but it wouldn’t be right to keep them from consideration, so they end up as at-large delegates. Others, like Daoud, are active with the party statewide.
What will delegates do?
At the convention, only the delegates will be allowed on the floor. The party keeps the delegates and the alternates separated so when a roll call takes place there’s no confusion about who is casting votes. Each state will announce in the roll call how its delegates are voting.
“Historically or traditionally, this is where you hear, ‘The great Tar Heel State of North Carolina casts all … its votes for XYZ,’” Daoud said.
He added that once a certain number of delegates have voted, the candidate becomes the official nominee.
It’s possible that the party will skip the roll call and vote for Trump on acclamation, said Seth Masket, director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver.
In addition to nominating a presidential candidate, the party also uses the convention to write its party platform, outlining Republicans’ beliefs and where the party plans to lead the country.
This year, delegates will do that work behind closed doors. Republicans released a draft of the platform before the convention began.
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