After Trump Shooting, California Republicans Hope to 'Turn Down the Burner' at Convention

California delegates to the Republican National Convention struck a measured tone ahead of the confab’s Monday kickoff in Milwaukee, with many hoping for messages of calm and unity following the attempted assassination of the party’s presumptive nominee, former President Donald Trump.

At a Sunday welcome event along the shores of Lake Michigan, party leaders and activists said the convention represented an opportunity to de-escalate partisan tensions after a historic act of political violence. Jessica Patterson, chairwoman of the California Republican Party, said she hoped the four-day event would signal that “there’s no room for hate.”

“I think that this is a great chance to talk to the American people about what a unified America can look like,” she said.

Patterson and members of California’s 169-member delegation, the largest of any state, snacked on shrimp cocktails amid the manicured gardens of the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a vice presidential hopeful, briefly spoke to the delegation and thanked them for their activism in one of the nation’s most liberal states.

“You’re in the arena, you’re spending your time, you’re coming to Milwaukee, and you’re doing that in a state where you’re outnumbered like two-to-one,” he said, referencing the Democrats’ lopsided voter registration advantage.

Delegates arrived in town less than 24 hours after the Saturday shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania, where suspected gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks shot Trump in the ear. Crooks was shot dead, one spectator was killed and two others were critically injured.

Peter Kuo, a delegate from Santa Clara, said his emotions swung from “hyper-stress when I first heard the news, to relief [to] sadness all at the same time for the victim that we lost.”

“We dodged a bullet, literally dodged a bullet,” Kuo added. “So the tone in these next five days will be a tone of: we need to unify the country.”

Not all conservatives have echoed the call for conciliation. Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, another VP hopeful, was among the GOP leaders who criticized President Joe Biden in the wake of the shooting.

“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance posted on X. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

The motive behind the assassination attempt is still unknown, but some Golden State delegates on Sunday said they blamed Democrats or the media for stoking division. Many echoed the sentiments of delegate Walter Allen, a city councilmember in Covina, who said he hoped the shooting would “turn down the flames of rhetoric for violence.”

Trump himself is no stranger to violent rhetoric. In his campaign to regain the White House, Trump has called his political opponents “vermin” and warned of a “bloodbath” if he’s not reelected in November. He has also threatened to wield the powers of the presidency to go after his political rivals and to overhaul the Department of Justice to align with those goals.

As Republicans gather this week in Milwaukee, Allen said, “The most important thing that’s going to come out of this is to turn down the burner and have just a political environment that deals with policy issues.”

Allen said he’d like to see the speeches over the next four nights focus on immigration, citing increased border apprehensions during Biden’s presidency and a renewed level of illegal crossings at the California border this year.

“We have a problem in our state, and the border states in general have a tremendous problem,” Allen said.

Cupertino delegate Luis Buhler said he is entering the convention with heightened anticipation for the “emotional moment when Donald Trump appears in front of this convention,” along with a newfound focus on Trump’s vice presidential pick, which Trump said he will announce Monday.

“What this [shooting] does is it highlights the fact that the VP has to be somebody who could be able to serve as president,” Buhler said. “I think everybody is going to be thinking about that, maybe even Donald Trump.”