DRAPER — Former Utah congresswoman Enid Mickelsen knows she's going to take some punches in her role as referee in the fight to use party rules to stop Donald Trump from being nominated at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
"No matter what the outcome is, there will be people that won't only be angry with me, they'll think I'm immoral, they'll think I've not adequately stuck to my principles," Mickelsen said.
Seated beneath a family portrait in a home decorated for Independence Day, the 58-year-old lawyer said that just goes along with being chairwoman of the July 18-21 convention's suddenly high-profile rules committee that begins meeting Wednesday, days before the convention's official start.
What's not in that job description, however, is standing between Trump and the nomination, Mickelsen said. The choice of the controversial billionaire businessman and reality TV star is being challenged by a growing number of delegates.
"The delegates will make up their own minds. My job as the rules chair(woman) is to make sure that the rules are followed. That the process is fair. That whichever is the minority view does not hijack the majority view," she said.
But Mickelsen isn't saying what outcome she expects after what could be three long days of meetings before Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena is locked down for a security sweep Saturday.
"That's getting too close to what I have to rule on," she said. "But Donald Trump followed the rules. He won under the rules that were established. The delegates would have to decide to change that. That will be up to them."
The GOP split
A staunch supporter of Mitt Romney in 2012, Mickelsen has been careful not to publicly back a presidential candidate this election cycle because of her involvement in the site selection and organization of the convention.
Still, she doesn't hesitate to say that if Trump is the nominee, he'll get her vote.
"I cannot vote for Hillary Clinton," said the woman recruited to join the Young Republicans in high school. With no other viable candidates, "you're stuck with a choice between the Republican nominee or the Democrat nominee."
Not that she doesn't have some misgivings about Trump.
"I don't agree with everything Donald Trump has done or said," Mickelsen said. "Do I think he's genuinely racist in his heart? I don't, as I look at the people that he's hired and that he's promoted. Do I think he really hates women? No, I don't. But boy, would I like to get him to start talking about things in a different way."
The split in the GOP has caused her concern, although she won't comment on whether Trump is to blame.
"It's hard to see that people have lost confidence in an institution I've worked for, absolutely. But I'm right there with them in some cases. Republicans have made plenty of mistakes, too," Mickelsen said.
For some of the GOP delegates headed to Cleveland to formally name the party's presidential pick, the mistakes were made by the voters who gave Trump enough support to secure the nomination.
Started in Colorado and reportedly spreading to several hundred delegates around the country so far, including some in Utah, the Free the Delegates movement seeks to ensure delegates can vote their conscience at the convention.
The issue is whether as delegates, they have to follow the state party rules and even laws that bind them to vote at the convention according to the results of presidential primary and caucus elections.
Supporters of the last-ditch effort to stop Trump claim the national party's own rules don't actually bind GOP delegates. Mickelsen said that interpretation already has been rejected a number of times over the past dozen years.
"You have good people, honest people, who fundamentally disagree about what the right thing to do is in that circumstance," Mickelsen said of the debate expected to dominate the rules committee's work.
"Some people say it's unconscionable to bind people to vote a certain way," she said." Other people say it's unconscionable for people to run for delegate knowing they're going to be bound and then say, 'Gee, I don't like how it turned out. I'm going to change."
Both sides will be heard by the rules committee, Mickelsen said, and whichever wins over a majority of the 112 members representing every state and territory will prevail in the recommendations sent to the convention floor for a final decision.
Right now, she said polls and news reports suggest most of the nearly 2,500 delegates back Trump.
"The only vote where we'll really know if that's the truth will be votes taken by delegates," who can adopt, reject or amend the rules committee recommendations, she said. "But I believe that is a distinct minority position."
A long career
Utah Eagle Forum President Gayle Ruzicka, one of the state's 40 GOP delegates, is among those rounding up support for the Free the Delegates effort. All of Utah's delegates are bound to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Ruzicka said she's known Mickelsen for many years and anticipates a fair hearing before the rules committee.
"Those who support this idea will have their voice heard," Ruzicka said. "All I'm asking her is to be fair, and I think she will be."
University of Utah political science professor Matthew Burbank said party leaders clearly don't want the latest — and likely the last — attempt to dump Trump from the ticket to dominate the convention.
Mickelsen is there to "adjudicate the process, make everyone feel like they were being heard and then close it down," Burbank said. "She is cognizant the party doesn't want this to happen."
Heading the rules committee will mark the end of her nearly decadelong involvement with the national GOP that has included serving on both the party's standing rules committee and the committees that set rules at past conventions.
She also said she's ready to leave politics behind, after a career that saw her dubbed the "Mormon Margaret Thatcher" after being elected to the U.S. House in 1994, then disgraced by a financial scandal involving her then-husband, Joe Waldholtz.
That time was "very tough," Mickelsen said. "I had made up my mind never to be involved in politics. I came home with a year-old daughter and need to support her financially as well as emotionally."
What got her involved again, she said, was a call seven years later from then-Utah GOP Chairman Joe Cannon, asking her to run for vice chairman. She won, later serving as chairman and for the past eight years, Utah's national committeewoman.
"I'm a big fan of Enid," Cannon, a former editor of the Deseret News, said, calling her both fair and tough. "She will be a really good chair(woman) of the rules committee. She's made for that."
When asked to head the rules committee, Mickelsen said she suggested "about a dozen other current and former officeholders who had a high national profile," thinking that would give the committee "an additional amount of credibility."
But RNC Chairman Reince Priebus didn't take her advice.
“Enid Mickelsen is a proven leader who brings a track record of excellence and fair-mindedness to this committee,” Priebus said in announcing her appointment in mid-June, calling the chairmanship "an important responsibility."
The appointment comes after spending several years as the head of the national party committee that chose Cleveland and as the vice chairman of the committee responsible for getting it all set up.
"In some ways, I'm better known in Cleveland than I am in Salt Lake City, only because Cleveland wanted this convention so badly," Mickelsen said, recalling residents walking up to her to talk up the Ohio city during site visits.
During the selection process, Mickelsen had health issues that were later diagnosed as lymphoma. After four rounds of chemotherapy, she said she was declared cancer free 1 1/2 years ago.
That's given her some perspective on politics. Her plans after the convention are focused on spending more time with her husband, Bluffdale Justice Court Judge Scott Mickelsen, and their children and grandchildren.
"Lying in bed after chemotherapy, I was not saying, 'I've got to get better so I can go back to more RNC meetings," she said. "It was, 'I've got to get better so I can be here for weddings or baptisms and all of those things you experience as a family.' So I'm going to be just fine with all of this being done."
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