Official: GOP probably continuing in Reno

Nevada Republican Party Executive Director Zac Moyle said Monday that the resumption of the weekend's incomplete state convention probably will be in Reno.

"We are meeting with everyone we can and getting all our ducks in a row," he said of plans to finish the convention that was abruptly halted Saturday night without electing delegates to the Republican National Convention.

Party rules require the convention to conclude in Reno, Moyle said, and a new plan might be announced by the end of the week. It could be several weeks before the continuance of the convention.

Hundreds of enthusiastic supporters of presidential candidate Ron Paul attended the convention and succeeded in changing the ground rules to allow any state delegate to run for national delegate, rather than limiting delegate choices to a pre-selected slate.

Angry recriminations continued to fly. Many delegates suspected the party establishment shut down the convention not because time ran out for the newly lengthy delegate election process, as party leaders claimed, but because they feared a takeover of the state's national delegation by Paul forces.

State Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, the convention chairman, said he hoped those fears could be allayed by a show of good faith.

"People were expecting us to secretly reconvene at 3 in the morning on Sunday, and that's simply ludicrous," he said of some of the conspiratorial rumors that flew after the convention's sudden recess. "You have a committed group of volunteer Republican Party members who are trying to create the best mechanism to express the will of Nevada Republicans. Nothing underhanded or duplicitous is going to occur. We just need to let the nominations committee get the lists together, figure out how and where and when we're going to do this, and notify all of the delegates."

Beers said delegates should rest assured they will be given ample time and notification to prepare for the new date.

Nevada sends 34 delegates to the national convention, including three automatic delegates: two Republican National Committee members and state Chairwoman Sue Lowden. Twenty-two delegates are elected from the ranks of all the state delegates, while nine more are elected from their congressional districts.

On Saturday, the convention broke into congressional districts and held delegate elections for the latter nine positions. The elections for the 1st and 3rd Districts, which are in Clark County, were completed, while counting for the 2nd District was halted halfway through and the ballots stored under seal in the safe of the Peppermill.

Party officials declined to release the results of the two completed counts on Monday, saying they had to be certified by the convention to become official. However, Moyle said, those votes would count, and would not be thrown out and replaced by new elections.

As for the remaining 22 delegates, he said there were 187 nominations from the convention floor and about 200 names previously submitted to the nominations committee. Those two lists will be merged, with a lot of overlap likely, and each would-be delegate will get two minutes to speak at the re-convention.

Jeff Greenspan, regional coordinator for the Ron Paul campaign, said Paul supporters will "do the same thing we always do, which is show up and stay in the game."

He said Paul supporters at the convention weren't the only ones who objected to the idea that only delegates handpicked by a small party committee would have a chance to go to the convention. There were 600 Paul delegates at the convention, he said, but 752 of the 1,347 delegates in attendance voted for the rules change.

Paul backers, he said, "want to be a part of the Republican Party," not take it over.

University of Nevada, Reno political scientist Eric Herzik said the failure of the convention was an embarrassment for Republicans, who should have anticipated the situation.

"The Ron Paul people are fanatical in their attachment to Ron Paul and their belief that the Republican Party has gone astray," he said. "There was no effort by the mainstream Republican Party to get delegates there, so they were ambushed by something they should have seen coming."

The convention revealed a lack of organization in the party in Nevada and a possible softness of support for presumptive nominee John McCain, he said.

Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball@ reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.