By the end of this month, Cameron Linton will be a Pitt graduate — and a Republican delegate.
As he’s running alongside just two other delegate candidates — Mike DeVanney and Mary Ann Meloy — for the 14th congressional district, Linton is ensured one of the three open seats for the district. After he gets elected at the primaries April 26, the economics and political science major will serve as one of 71 Republican delegates in the state.
Linton wants to pursue a career in financial planning — not politics. But as the former president of Pitt College Republicans, Linton said he didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to become a delegate. And he said his heavy involvement with the local GOP, such as getting elected as the 43rd state Senate district representative for the Republican State Committee in 2014 to represent Republican voters, showed him it could be an easy win.
Barring everything goes right at the polls, Linton will travel to Cleveland for the Republican National Convention July 18 to 21, where he and the state’s 53 other congressional district delegates can vote for any presidential nominee within the party during the first ballot at the convention.
The state’s remaining 17 Republican delegates are required to vote for the winner of the Pennsylvania primaries in the first ballot. If a candidate gets 1,237 votes on that ballot, they’ll win the Republican presidential nomination, according to the Republican National Committee’s Convention Facts. This means Linton, DeVanney, Meloy and the other 51 congressional district delegates around the state have the power to determine the Republican presidential nominee.
Linton sat down with The Pitt News to discuss what it means to be a delegate, the importance of young people voting and the Trump-centric media coverage of this year’s presidential race.
The Pitt News: To start off, tell me about how you became a delegate for the Republican National Committee?
Cameron Linton: So you have to get 250 signatures from registered Republicans within the district. The district is the 14th congressional district, which is Mike Doyle’s. You get three weeks — mostly in the month of February — you get three weeks to do it, and it’s a lot harder than it sounds. I turned in about 310 signatures, but I had to go out probably four to five days a week, eight hours a day, knocking on people’s doors, asking them for signatures. Quite an event.
TPN: What kind of delegate are you? Are you committed to a specific candidate already?
CL: I’m a congressional delegate, and I am officially uncommitted, and I will remain uncommitted at the convention. Personally, I’m going to be voting for John Kasich in the primary. However, that does not mean I will be voting for him as a delegate come Cleveland.
TPN: Do you know who you are voting for at the convention?
CL: No, not yet. I want to see how the primary results go before I make that decision.
TPN: How do you qualify to be a delegate? What kind of experience do you have to have?
CL: As far as official qualifications, there are none. You have to be a registered Republican and you have to live in the area that you’re running in. For me, I believe I’m qualified because I was one of the youngest Republicans on the State Committee elected in 2004. I am a local committee man, and I’ve just generally been involved with the party for the past four years since I’ve been in college.
TPN: I’ve heard you don’t want to go into politics full-time. How did you get roped into being a delegate this year?
CL: I saw an opportunity. People would ask me last semester, people in politics asked me if I was going to do it, and I wasn’t sure. But come January, I decided — this is a congressional district that doesn’t have many Republicans, so I think it was an opportunity for me to get an opportunity to be a delegate.
TPN: Who asked you if you were going to run and why?
CL: Just random volunteer people from the local party and because they know that I’ve run for party office before and won.
TPN: What does a delegate actually do? Can you explain your job and the delegate process leading up to the convention?
CL: So delegates actually choose the nominee. It’s very similar to the way that [the] electoral college works. In the primaries, delegates are chosen to represent the state and go to the convention to actually nominate the candidate. What makes this year special, and my position special, is that it is quite likely at this point that no one is going to receive 50. You have to get 50 percent of the delegates in order to be the nominee. It does not look like Trump. He will get close, but it’s quite possible he won’t get to 50 percent. What makes me in a special position is we are one of the few states that allow our congressional delegates to be unbound, which means I can vote for whoever I want. I could vote for my dad if I wanted to.
TPN: How often do you work as a delegate? Is it time consuming?
CL: It’s not like an office position where you go and work per se, like a congressman or a state representative would do. Honestly, the only time I am officially doing official business is at the convention, which will last about a week, and then after the convention’s over I am no longer a delegate.
TPN: Are there delegate events you have to go to?
CL: Yeah, I got a letter in the mail from the state GOP. There’s going to be something in early June. It’s in Harrisburg, I think. It’s just a general [meeting], have all the delegates come to Harrisburg and understand more about what the role is and how it all works.
TPN: What will you be doing on primary day?
CL: I’m obviously going to vote, but I’ll probably be standing at a poll — try to make it to a few different polls in the district to get a chance to meet some of the voters. Obviously, not a whole lot of Republicans. The only real Republican area in the district is Oakmont, so I’ll probably spend most of my day at Oakmont.
TPN: What role will Pennsylvania delegates play at the convention in July?
CL: Quite possibly a very important role, because there’s going to be 54 of us who are unbounded, who are free to do whatever we want, and I think it is very likely that Trump will get within 100 votes of a majority on the first ballot in Pennsylvania, as the largest delegation of delegates who are free to do what they want at the convention on the first ballot.
TPN: What kind of perspective has the experience given you? What have you learned so far?
CL: It takes a lot of work. Like I said, you have to get 250 signatures, and that really was a lot of effort to do — mostly by myself. As far as anything that I’ve learned, I’ve learned that it’s going to be a very expensive trip to Cleveland. You have to pay for your own hotel and food and all of that jazz, so it’s going to be quite expensive.
TPN: What do you hope happens at the convention?
CL: I hope it can be civil. No matter what the outcome is, I hope it is civil on every side. I hope that our party is not completely destroyed by the end of it.
TPN: Should young people vote and get involved in politics?
CL: Yeah, I think it is important for really anyone, even if you’re not young, to be involved in politics. Obviously, it has a great influence on your life, but specifically for younger people, we are the future of our country. We are the future of everything, and we should try to play as much of a role in influencing that as we can.
TPN: How can Pitt students get more involved in politics?
CL: Regardless of what party you support, volunteer for campaign events, whether it’s at the national level or at the local level, whatever it is. Getting involved, that’s how I did [it]. I was an intern my [first year at college] for the Romney campaign, so just getting involved, trying to get internships, that’s really where I learned how best to apply myself.
TPN: Do you think college students have more of an interest in politics with this presidential election or less?
CL: I think everyone has more of an interest in this race, it doesn’t matter who you are, I think everyone is interested in this. Obviously, it’s because of Trump, but I think the media has, I don’t know if it’s necessarily a good or bad thing, but they have certainly attempted to divide the entire country, in my opinion, really for ratings, which it’s worked, because they all do fantastic with ratings when Trump is on TV.