Hillsdale County GOP Chairman Glenn Frobel will be a member of the Michigan delegation to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, this July.
Frobel, who supports Donald Trump, said that it’s impossible to predict what will happen.
“I’ll just take it a day at a time, I guess,” Frobel said. “I’m going to be the only non-corrupt one there.”
Frobel was chosen to be one of Michigan’s 59 delegates at the state Republican convention on April 9, according to the Michigan Republican Party.
Hillsdale and Branch counties have an agreement that the counties will alternate in sending a representative to each convention every four years.
“It’s worked out for a long time between our counties like that because we’re smaller counties than the Eatons and the Jacksons and Lenawees and the Monroes and the Washtenaws of the world,” Frobel said.
Michigan’s delegation also includes Rep. Justin Amash, who supports Ted Cruz, Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, who supports Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and Michigan GOP Chairman Ronna Romney McDaniel, who supports Donald Trump. To win the Republican nomination outright, a candidate needs to win 1,237 delegates — a majority of the total delegates from the 50 states.
In Tuesday’s New York primary, Donald Trump picked up 89 delegates while Ohio Gov. John Kasich gained 4 delegates. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, won no candidates Tuesday. New York solidified Trump’s delegate lead. To date, Trump controls 845 delegates, Cruz 559, and Kasich 148.
At the convention in July, delegates will be bound to vote for their pledged candidate in the first round of voting. If, after the first round of voting no candidate has won 1,237 votes, delegates will be released to vote for whomever they choose.
“I have no idea what will happen,” Frobel said. “It’s politics — I don’t know who’s committed to who right now. I may be the only person who’s voting for Trump after the first round. I just don’t know. It’s worse than Vegas.”
He plans to stick it out for Trump the whole way through.
“He won our county. He won the state,” Frobel said. “He’s different. I kinda like that. The party’s been having fits trying to control him—that’s what they like to do is control things. They can’t control him.”
Political commentators also speculate that if no nominee is chosen after the first round of voting, a new candidate — someone other than Trump, Cruz, or Kasich — will be proposed by the party for the nominee.
“They keep talking about this phantom candidate,” Frobel said. “If they do that, I think it’d be my last time around at the rodeo for the Republican people. It would be
like — a suicide. One guy told me ‘there’s a lot of pressure on you guys on that floor.’ He said the money is flying all over the place. I’m thinking ‘that ain’t proper.’”
He added: “It all depends on the rules that they hammer out.”
Rules for the convention will be determined by the powerful Rules Committee—made up of two delegates from each state.
The two delegates who will represent Michigan on the Rules Committee are Judi Schwalbach, a Kasich supporter, and Matt Hall, who supports Trump.
Saul Anuzis, a leader in Cruz’s Michigan campaign, claimed that they were “double-crossed” by Kasich’s campaign at the state convention, after Kasich delegates switched sides and voted with Trump behind closed doors, CNN reported.
For Frobel, Trump’s strength won at the convention was a solid victory.
“We have a Trump majority—we pretty much have every committee locked up on the Trump side,” Frobel said.