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WASHINGTON - The music will be rising into a crescendo, the hall glowing with red, blue and white stars, confetti at the waiting, when Utah delegates take the microphone in the nomination of John McCain for the president and cast their ballots for
Mitt Romney.
It's not that Utah Republicans love Romney so much they can't bring themselves to back McCain or that they won't let go of Romney's failed presidential bid. It's the rules.
As it stands, all 36 of the state's delegates are bound on the first ballot to vote for the winner of Utah's Republican primary: Romney, who nabbed a whopping 90 percent of the vote. A change to the bylaws was punted at the state's convention and state party officials say there's a concern now that changing the rules may cause the delegates not to be seated.
"Until the convention is over, there's still some possibilities, but as it sits today, we're still voting for Mitt Romney," says Utah Republican Party chief Stan Lockhart.
Other states may be in a similar position. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and head of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City, won 11 states during the nominating process, while former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee took eight.
But several of those states do not have the same type of winner-take-all race where delegates are bound to vote for the victor.
Huckabee, for example, took the first contest, Iowa, but because the results to not bind the state's Republican delegates to the winner, they can now back McCain. Colorado's GOP delegates are not pledged to a single candidate, either, but all of the delegates selected at convention personally promised to back McCain.
The Colorado Republican Party's political director and in-house general counsel, Ryan Call, says there's likely to be some other votes on the first ballot for contenders other than McCain.
"I can certainly see, and it may be very likely in the first vote, is a split ticket vote that someone stands up and votes for Mike Huckabee, for Mitt Romney, maybe even Ron Paul," Call says.
But in the end, it may not matter.
McCain has more than enough delegates to clinch the nomination, and even if there are some ballots cast for other candidates, someone likely will move to approve the Arizona senator by acclamation - or a voice vote.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, has been to every convention since 1976 and says the organizers sometimes do a roll call of states' delegates, and sometime they don't.
Since the candidate is obvious, votes for anyone else won't really count.
"It's a mere footnote," Sabato says. "It will give the talking heads something to talk about, but it won't matter."
The McCain campaign isn't fretting.
"We're confident that the Utah Republican Party will come up with a resolution that allows national delegates to support the Republican nominee and allow the delegates pledged to Mitt Romney to support John McCain, as Gov. Romney has asked all of his delegates to do," says McCain spokesman Jeff Sadosky.
Lockhart says finding that solution has been a challenge.
"We've tried to figure out how to help Mitt Romney and honor his wishes," Lockhart says. "It's proven more difficult than the average person would think."
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