CLEVELAND _ Republicans haven't even kicked off their convention yet, and already sparks are flying between factions of a party eager to appear unified.
The fight is taking place among members of the 112-member strong platform committee, which is meeting in Cleveland this week ahead of next week's official convention. On Tuesday night, after two days of debate, they signed off on their party platform, a complex, extensive document that addressed everything from marriage to manufacturing.
But at the same time, 37 of the delegates also signed a "minority report," a sort of petition by those who couldn't muster a majority for their proposals. In this case, it supports doing away with the whole platform and replacing it with something shorter and simpler.
Now, some of those delegates say they've been duped by a group of pro-gay rights delegates to sign onto a document that could force a messy floor vote at next week's convention. Not so, say other people familiar with the platform process. No one was being deceived, they just don't want to appear divided, they say.
Boyd Matheson of Utah wrote the language in the minority report, but he said he did not support doing away with the whole platform and replacing it with his mission statement. In fact, he withdrew support of his own proposal amid the fight.
"A minority report is a divisive issue that some people are trying to use to air their issues on the floor for the convention," Matheson said late Tuesday.
David Barton, a Texas delegate who helped him edit the language, went a step further, saying "someone hijacked the process."
He added: "It looks to us like they created a controversy."
Matheson and Barton allege that a group of LGBT-friendly Republicans who had tried _ unsuccessfully _ to include some positive mention of the gay community in the party's platform, was behind the scheme.
The two will send an email to the other 35 delegates who also signed the report on Wednesday morning saying just this. Texas' other platform committee delegate, Diana Denman, also signed the minority report, and expressed her interest in removing her name.
"I warned that many would be watching us this week who want to divide us: the media, special interests, and the liberal left, to name a few. It has happened, and it came from among us," Matheson's email will say.
In the email, both Matheson and Barton added, "We are denouncing this effort for what it is: a desperate and divisive attempt to advance a personal agenda at the expense of the over 100 delegates who have spent hours crafting the platform for 2016."
Others observers of the process scoffed at that, saying the signers knew what they were doing but got cold feet afterward when they feared being associated with a gay rights push. They said the LGBT rights coalition was being bullied, essentially used as an excuse to pull support for a proposal they supported but that could cause headaches for the party next week.
The minority report does not include any language supporting gay rights. It is identical to Matheson's original text _ 17 very broad policy stances on issues like separation of powers, regulation, education and defense _ which was titled "Republican Platform: We Hold these Truths to be Self Evident, Cleveland July 2016."
The campaign of presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump, meanwhile, had remained quiet during the platform process. The Guardian reported that party staffers kept Matheson from answering questions from the press about why he was withdrawing support for his own proposal.
"I was taking my name off a document that I had signed because it was not what I had believed it was," Matheson later told The Dallas Morning News. He said he thought he was signing onto a resolution that would support adding his proposal to the existing platform, not replace it altogether.
When asked if he had spoken to Trump staffers about the issue, or if they had weighed in, he said simply, "No. Literally, I've been holed up trying to contact everything and trying to explain what happened."
If enough delegates remove their names from the petition, it could die without being considered by the full convention. A petition of this sort hasn't been approved since 1976, when Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford were battling for the party's favor, according to the platform chairman, U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.
