Milwaukee hosting the Republican National Convention gives two Gen Z party leaders in counties that overwhelmingly vote for Democrats hope for the Nov. 5 election for president.
Dane County Republican Party Chair Brandon Maly, profiled in Isthmus in October, says this week’s convention could help with his goal of boosting the turnout of GOP suburban voters. “If we Republicans can capitalize on the donors and surrogates coming to Milwaukee, then Dane County and Wisconsin will certainly benefit,” Maly, 24, says.
In past statewide elections, Republicans have cast between 18% and 22% of the vote in Dane County; President Donald Trump got 22% of the vote in 2020.
Milwaukee County Republican Chair Hilario Deleon, who is 23, is an ambassador for the city where he grew up. He says he was the youngest Midwest chairman of a local Republican party when he won what began as a six-candidate race for chairman in February 2023.
Although Deleon’s county is hosting the RNC, he doesn’t expect to formally welcome the delegates, alternates, and national and international officials visiting Milwaukee this week from the podium.
Profiled by Politico.com last week, and scheduled to do interviews with national and international reporters this week, Deleon casts former President Donald Trump, who will be officially named the party’s presidential candidate on Thursday, as the savior of democracy.
Deleon, who worked for Trump’s 2020 campaign, has been a Trump fan since, at age 14, he watched Trump take that June 2015 escalator ride in Trump Tower to announce that he would run for president.
It took eight years, but Deleon finally met Trump on June 20. “He was so kind. There was no greater honor. He said I looked great, liked my suit, and asked how [pre-convention] things were going in Milwaukee.”
After the handshake and photo-op, Deleon posted this on his X account: “I will not rest until we win back the great State of Wisconsin and re-elect Donald Trump as the 47th president.” Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 but lost it in 2020.
Milwaukee County Republican voters usually make up less than 30% of the countywide vote in statewide elections.
Deleon vows to take the Republican gospel to new neighborhoods and reach disinterested and young voters like him. “Republicans have had a hard time listening to people, and they may not like to hear everything that everyone has to say because there are some dark things going on out there,” says Deleon, who calls himself “half Hispanic.”
“This is the fight that I have with people in my party,” he adds. “Some of them don’t understand that, in order to win, we have to build a commonsense coalition of disaffected liberals, independents, Libertarians and Republicans.
“There’s 20,000 [Milwaukee County] Republicans that didn’t vote in that ‘22 cycle,” Deleon notes. Many of them simply felt “their vote doesn’t count,” since Democrats ring up such huge margins in Milwaukee County.
Why should Wisconsin residents vote for Trump?
Deleon listed high grocery and gas prices, crime, the surge of illegal drugs that “poison”” and kill, growing numbers of homeless, failure to control the nation’s southern border, and the threat of nuclear war because of the weak international leadership of President Biden.
“I don’t like seeing people suffer,” Deleon says. “I’m more worried about nuclear war than the changing climate.”
Deleon says Trump’s conviction of 34 felonies has had “no effect” on his chances of being elected President.
“That’s 34 more reasons why I’m going to vote for him,” Deleon says. “People feel that we’re living in a banana republic where the current government, and the leader of the current government and his Department of Justice is going after their leading rival…Let the American people decide.”
Deleon also says the 81-year-old Biden is not healthy and acts “like a robot,” which has voters “terrified.”
But Milwaukee County Democratic Chair Chris Sinicki dismisses concerns about Biden’s health.
Sinicki wrote in the party’s newsletter about Biden’s recent visit to Milwaukee: “While I realize many of you have concerns with the upcoming election, what [local party leaders] witnessed was an energetic, upbeat and positive President.”
Democrats, meanwhile, plan anti-Trump messages on billboards and buses. Biden surrogates visiting Milwaukee will include Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas, and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Steven Walters started covering the Capitol in 1988. Contact him at stevenscotwalters@gmail.com.
