CHEYENNE, Wyo.—Republicans in five states penalized for choosing delegates early believe the GOP will let all of their delegates take part in the Republican National Convention.
They say the national party ultimately will want a full complement of delegates -- and won't want to ostracize key swing states.
"I'm hopeful that cooler heads will prevail after the nominating contests are over," said New Hampshire Republican Chairman Fergus Cullen. "But I'm not predicting any outcome."
The national party is suspending half of the delegates from Wyoming, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and Michigan as punishment for holding primary events before Feb. 5, the date set by the national GOP as the earliest states can choose national delegates.
Tom Sansonetti, organizer of Wyoming's Republican county conventions held a week ago, said the penalized states might try to admit all of their delegates at the start of the September convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Rather than bar half of those people -- his thinking goes -- the convention's Committee on Contests would relent to the likely nominee's wishes.
He said the full convention would then feel similar pressure to accept the committee recommendation to allow all 137 suspended delegates -- about 6 percent of the total -- to enter.
"I believe that the chances are good that the delegates will be restored at the convention because the eventual nominee, nine months from now, will want a full delegation from each of the five states that decided to go early," Sansonetti said.
Sansonetti was the Republican National Committee's rules chairman from 1996-2000, helping create the penalty for early delegate selection. Sansonetti wanted an even tougher rule -- one to withhold all delegates from early states -- than the one adopted at the 2000 convention.
Others on the party's national rules committee thought that would be treating fellow Republicans too harshly. Along those lines, Wyoming Republican Chairman Fred Parady believes a desire to be easy on the states will lead the delegates' restoration.
"Fundamentally we're going to want to be united going into the national presidential race," Parady said.
Republicans in Michigan and Florida, especially, doubted that any of their delegates would be barred because of their states' general election significance.
"That's not based on any conversations with anybody," said Michigan Republican spokesman Bill Nowling. "But it certainly would be a rather unprecedented move to keep half of the delegates from such a key swing state as Michigan off of the convention floor."
Florida Republican spokeswoman Erin VanSickle likened the early primary dispute to a fairly minor family spat.
"We'll continue to communicate with the RNC and at the end of the day it's all within the family," VanSickle said.
More than half of the suspended delegates are in Florida and Michigan. The GOP has suspended 57 of 114 delegates from Florida and 30 of 60 from Michigan.
South Carolina has lost 23 of its 47 delegates. Rob Godfrey, spokesman for the South Carolina Republican Party, said the state party would "pursue all avenues" to try go get all of its delegates restored.
Wyoming has lost 14 of its 28 delegates. Like Republicans in other states, Wyoming's Republicans held their primary season event early in a bid to draw candidates' attention. They were partly successful -- drawing visits from Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul last fall -- but ultimately stole little if any limelight from traditionally early Iowa and New Hampshire.
