CLEVELAND — Talk with the Maryland delegates to the Republican National Convention this week and most embrace Donald Trump. Some even believe he will carry the GOP to victory in their home state for the first time in decades.
But as the lights went up Tuesday on the second night of the convention here, and the party formally nominated Trump as its presidential nominee, signs of the internal strife that have plagued the GOP for months remain ubiquitous — an ominous backdrop as Trump looks to November.
The generally perfunctory roll call of states, in which each state formally declares how many of its delegates are allocated to the candidates, caused confusion and jeers as the District of Columbia attempted to give most of its delegates to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Then Alaska sought a recount, and some state delegations were not present at first.
That followed a day in which Republicans scrambled to defend Melania Trump's primetime address against charges of plagiarism. While the Trump campaign and others dismissed it as a fabricated controversy, a number of elected Republicans offered carefully worded speeches from the podium that avoided the topic.
"Democracy is a series of choices. We Republicans have made our choice," said House Speaker Paul Ryan, one of several GOP leaders who was late to embrace Trump. "Have we had our arguments this year? Sure we have, and you know what I call those? Signs of life."
Maryland Senate Minority Leader J. B. Jennings of Baltimore County, an at-large delegate for Trump, also dismissed the idea that the divisions within the GOP this year are any different from past elections.
"You always have people who are not happy, and they're going to find fault with the other person," said Jennings, who initially supported former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. "Look, the party's fractured — so is the Democratic Party — it's the way it's going to happen. Nobody agrees with anybody 100 percent of the time."
As expected, Maryland cast its 38 votes for Trump.
But a number of party stalwarts from Maryland — and elsewhere — were noticeably absent. That group includes high-profile figures such as Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan as well as longtime party leaders, state lawmakers and candidates who have attended in the past.
"I really wasn't motivated to go," said Ellen Sauerbrey, a two-time GOP gubernatorial nominee in Maryland who has attended so many national conventions that she lost count of the number — either seven or eight.
"Donald Trump," she said, "was certainly not my first choice in the primary."
Sauerbrey, whose first choice was Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, was quick to add that she now supports the New York businessman and believes that most other Republicans will fall in line.
Many longtime party officials who supported other candidates in the primary are joining a number of newly elected delegates, who were early and ardent backers of Trump, at the convention on the shores of Lake Erie.
Some of them are worried about the impact Trump could have on the party but want to be good soldiers for the GOP or are motivated by their opposition to Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said Heather Olsen, the former chair of the Prince George's County Republican Central Committee. Olsen resigned earlier this year because she could not get behind Trump.
"There are not that many who are willing to say, explicitly, that they're not supporting the guy, but there are a lot of people who are very unhappy," she said.
"There's a lot of people who are grinning through it."
Hogan is one of only two Republican governors not supporting Trump. Hogan held a press conference in Annapolis on Tuesday to endorse Republican Kathy Szeliga's campaign against Democrat Chris Van Hollen for the Senate seat to be vacated by Barbara Mikulski.
But many of the questions he fielded were about the convention he declined to attend. The governor brushed off inquiries about the gathering's early speakers, saying he hadn't watched them.
Szeliga, who also skipped the convention, distanced herself from some of the harsher rhetoric, including repeated calls to send Clinton to prison. Szeliga said her campaign is best served by her staying at home, echoing a line used by many other Republicans across the country who are sitting Cleveland out.
"Right here in Maryland I have plenty of voters to meet with," said Szeliga, an at-large delegate to the GOP Convention in 2012. "I need a clone. I would like to be everywhere all the time."
Hogan said he's not concerned that his absence in Cleveland will lead to hard feelings with party faithful.
"I think the people in Maryland are pretty satisfied with the job we're doing," he said.
Despite the remaining divisions, Republicans largely coalesced to support Melania Trump on Tuesday amid a media firestorm over sections of her speech on Monday that matched or largely tracked an address Michelle Obama gave in 2008. The Trump campaign called the allegations absurd.
Larry Helminiak, a longtime GOP official and the 2nd vice chair of the Maryland party, said the allegations of plagiarism were different than those that tanked then-Sen. Joe Biden's presidential campaign in 1987. Biden's speech, Helminiak said, was written largely by Biden.
Melania Trump had said she relied on as little help as possible, but Helminiak suggested a speech writer likely drafted most of her speech. "There's no way that this lady wrote her speech," Helminiak said. "It's a speech writer."
Jennings agreed.
"What is it — a 1,600-word speech and two sentences were close to another speech?" he said. "To me it's no big deal."
Sun reporter Michael Dresser contributed to this report.