Colorado woman among delegates leading newest effort to block Trump from nomination

Kendal Unruh is a high school government teacher in Englewood. She’s a Republican delegate. Her latest lesson plan: convincing fellow delegates they need to dump Donald Trump.

“If he is the face of our party, he will actually destroy our party,” Unruh said. “He should have just run as a Democrat. This is actually our party, and the open primaries, the blanket primaries gave us our nominee. It’s time for our party to select our nominee.

Four weeks from the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, and Unruh wants to change the rules and unbind and free every delegate so they’re not committed to support Trump on the first ballot.

Southern Colorado Republicans are split.

“The goal here is to beat Hillary Clinton,” Isaiah Hess said. “Right now we don’t have a nominee who’s going to. We’ve got to find a nominee who will actually go up against her.”

“To me it would be just like a football game and in the 4th quarter, your team is behind, so let’s change the rules so you’re team can win,” Mick Hartley of Monument said. “It’s ridiculous and counterproductive. There’s a lot of things that bother me about Donald Trump, but compared to Hillary Clinton, I will crawl over broken glass to support Donald Trump.”

Unruh, a convention vet, supported Ted Cruz before he dropped out. Now, she will support anybody but the current presumptive nominee.

Trump won the GOP Primary with 13 million votes, more than any other candidate in history.

Unruh says she’s not concerned the movement will alienate the Trump voters and splinter the GOP.

“You know what fractures the party even more, is when you put up a presumptive nominee that doesn’t represent your value system,” Unruh said. “We are grassroots Republican activists, we are people who know what our party stands for. It’s not a matter of can you sing Kumbaya and get along.”