Iowa delegate calls for alternative to Trump

An Iowa delegate to the Republican National Convention said Thursday he can't support Donald Trump for president and intends to urge others going to Cleveland to seek an alternative.

Cecil Stinemetz of Urbandale said that he thinks party rules don't bind delegates and nominating Trump will doom the party to losing to Hillary Clinton in the fall.

'People can vote their conscience, so I'm trying to let other people know that this is not over,” Stinemetz said in an interview Thursday.

There has been a chorus of criticism of Trump since he said a federal district judge isn't being fair to him in a lawsuit involving Trump University because of the judge's Mexican heritage.

Stinemetz, who supported Ted Cruz during the Iowa caucuses, said that the judge comment was the last straw for him, but that his misgivings about Trump have been long-standing.

'He says he's a conservative, but there's nothing to back it up,” he said. Stinemetz adds that now Trump is the presumptive nominee, the media will come down hard on him, and he will lose to Clinton in the fall.

The idea of denying Trump the nomination has been simmering in some quarters, even as party leaders are urging the rank and file to accept that Trump will be the nominee and to focus on beating Clinton.

Conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt has urged the convention to find a different nominee. A.J. Spiker, the former Iowa GOP chair who was an adviser to Rand Paul's presidential campaign, also tweeted this week that an alternative should step up and replace Trump.

However, the idea that anybody but Trump will be nominated was dismissed by Jeff Kaufmann, chair of the Iowa GOP.

'This is idle conversation. It is not going to happen,” he said. 'Donald Trump is our nominee and continuing the conversation is doing nothing but making a few people feel good.”

He said such talk also endangers Iowa's first-in-the-nation status in the presidential selection process, and he largely laid the blame for it at the feet of Spiker.

'To have conversations and to do things that make Iowa look silly is not helpful to our state and our standing in the country,” he said.

Critics of the move to dump Trump say doing so would thwart the will of the people. Trump, they say, bested 16 other candidates in a series of primaries and caucuses and earned the nomination.

Some other Iowa delegates to the convention, who also supported other candidates, said they think the rules make the situation clear.

David Chung of Cedar Rapids, who ran as a Cruz delegate and helped write the rules for the Iowa delegation, said the chair will report the result on the convention floor.

'There won't be any polling the delegation, the chair will cast the ballot,” he said.

Kaufmann said the rules require the delegation to support Trump, unless another name is put into nomination. If that happens, he said, the delegation's vote will reflect the results of the Feb. 1 caucuses.

Stinemetz said, however, that delegates have the ultimate authority at the convention. He says the rules are widely misunderstood.

Bob Vander Plaats, who also is a national delegate and endorsed Cruz before the caucuses, said he thinks the convention delegates have the ultimate say. The comment about the judge, though, crossed the line, and if those types of things continue, 'then I think Cleveland is up for grabs.”

James Q. Lynch contributed to this story.