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At Convention, 2 Disruptions: Tropical Storm and Ron Paul At Convention, 2 Disruptions: Tropical Storm and Ron Paul
(about 7 hours later)
TAMPA, Fla. — Mitt Romney’s hopes for a highly disciplined and scripted nominating convention continued to fray Monday morning as a tropical storm barreled toward New Orleans and was expected to strengthen into a hurricane. TAMPA, Fla. — It was supposed to be the start of their four-day effort to sell Mitt Romney to the nation, but Monday instead proved to be a day of frustration for Republicans as the delay in beginning their convention deprived them of their national stage and brought a fresh airing of intraparty tensions.
Mr. Romney’s convention organizers were also warily keeping an eye on some restive delegates, including supporters of Representative Ron Paul of Texas, who were poised to challenge parts of the convention’s rules and platform when it begins Tuesday afternoon. As Tropical Storm Isaac brushed past the convention here Monday, it moved slowly on a more dangerous path toward New Orleans, growing stronger by the hour. Forecasters on Monday afternoon predicted that the storm would land somewhere in southeastern Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane, just as Republicans were set to kick their gathering into high gear.
Broadcast and cable networks on Monday began shifting some of their resources toward the hurricane-threatened Gulf Coast after it became clear that the storm’s impact on the Tampa area was minimal, as Republicans continued preparations to open their convention a day late. While there were predictions of winds of 100 miles per hour accompanying the storm, most menacing was the prospect of the enormous amounts of water that Isaac will be bringing ashore. Residents in low-lying areas were urged to leave because of the possibility of storm surges as high as 12 feet along the Gulf Coast and heavy rainfall.
“We are going to make sure that we monitor the storm as it proceeds,” said Russ Schriefer, a top adviser to Mr. Romney who is helping to produce the convention. “Obviously, our first concern is for the people who are in the path of the storm. We have a wait-and-see attitude to see what happens.” With the convention already delayed by one day, Mr. Romney was heading to Tampa on Tuesday with his top aides eager to quickly hold the roll call vote to officially make him the party’s presidential nominee for fear that the storm could cause further disruption. Party leaders gaveled the convention to order Monday to mark the formal opening of the event and then adjourned it.
The Romney campaign has for months seen the party’s convention as a crucial part of their strategy to define Mr. Romney in front of an audience of millions and to set the terms of the fall debate with President Obama. The Romney campaign’s decision to postpone most events for a day because of the storm deprived the party of the carefully prepared convention script that was to keep a super-tight focus on Mr. Romney and a still tighter lid on discord.
A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Monday showed the race essentially deadlocked despite more than half a billion dollars worth of television commercials being shown by each side so far. With the vacuum created by the postponement, “everybody who has a reason to be upset about something has time to talk about it,” said Drew McKissick, a South Carolina delegate. And, as seen Monday, to try to do something about it.
Mr. Romney had the support of 47 percent of registered voters in the poll, while Mr. Obama had 46 percent — a similar result to the survey’s findings in early July. Mr. McKissick was busy rallying support to fight Mr. Romney’s legal team over new party rules that he said would hinder the kind of insurgent challenges that Mr. Romney has faced this year — a clash that appeared to have been resolved enough to prevent it from spilling onto the convention floor Tuesday.
But Mr. Romney’s desire for precision and control — perhaps born out of his background as a management consultant — is being broadly tested during what is typically the most choreographed part of a presidential campaign. A day of closed-door talks between Romney aides and conservative activists ended with a compromise that one person involved said would “result in what we think is a very warm and fuzzy convention.” Some activists announced that they had succeeded in preventing what they called a power grab by the party establishment.
Haley Barbour, a Republican who was the governor of Mississippi when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast in 2005, told reporters in Tampa on Monday that “everyone here has one eye on the storm.” The competing images between the political convention and the storm were a challenge, but, he said, “I don’t think it will have any significant impact on the capacity for this to be a springboard for Romney and Ryan.” But supporters of Representative Ron Paul of Texas expressed frustration over what they said were efforts by Mr. Romney’s aides and supporters to silence their voices in the convention hall. They were goaded along by Mr. Paul, who has declined a speaking slot, accusing the Romney campaign of trying to control his message.
The convention lost one high-profile speaker to the storm Monday when Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who had been considered a possible vice-presidential pick, said that he would not attend because of the storm threatening his state. And supporters of Representative Todd Akin, the Missouri Senate candidate who lost much of the party’s support after his comments on “legitimate” rape and pregnancy, revived Tea Party-infused arguments against the “establishment” wing of the party, saying Mr. Romney and “party bosses” had abandoned him after his remarks.
Tropical Storm Isaac has already forced organizers to shuffle the schedule, squeezing speakers together on three nights, instead of four. Instead of taking up one night, speeches dedicated to attacks on Mr. Obama’s record will instead be woven into three nights. All of it unfolded before a restless audience of about 4,500 delegates and 16,000 journalists left with little to do but stare at television screens covered with images of Isaac bearing down on the Gulf Coast, a haunting reminder of Hurricane Katrina — and, in this context, the political damage its aftermath caused to George W. Bush.
Convention organizers on Monday also postponed a briefing scheduled for 1 p.m. on the impact of Mr. Obama’s policies on women “due to the timing of the opening of the Republican National Convention.” “The fact that we shut down today is a great tribute to the ghost of Katrina,” said John Hager, a former lieutenant governor of Virginia who is also, it happens, the father-in-law of Mr. Bush’s daughter Jenna.
The only planned activity at the massive Tampa Bay Times Forum, the site of the convention, which remained largely empty on Monday, was a 10-minute formality in the afternoon for the Republican chairman to gavel the convention to order. Organizers said they planned to show off their high-tech video screens with a short film — an effort that will give networks something to broadcast. The storm also posed a delicate challenge for President Obama, whose efforts to manage the response may have given him a moment to look presidential in Mr. Romney’s absence, but were also fraught with the risk of appearing to take advantage of a natural disaster at a highly politicized moment.
Networks struggled to decide where to place resources and top talent as they sought to cover two big and rapidly changing stories. In many cases, the approaching storm was taking precedence. Convention planners said they had no regrets about their decision to postpone Monday’s activities. And they said in interviews that any ripples of discord on Monday would be forgotten by Tuesday night, when Mr. Romney’s wife, Ann, will speak, followed by the keynote speech by Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.
CNN said Monday that it was rerouting two anchors, Anderson Cooper and Soledad O’Brien, from Tampa to New Orleans, putting them in place to lead the network’s coverage of the storm as it approaches the Gulf Coast. Fox News also diverted one of its anchors, Shepard Smith, to New Orleans. “Nothing is going to happen that is anything more than noise,” Newt Gingrich said in an interview Monday evening, dismissing the worry in the air among some senior Republicans. “We’re going to leave here united and with enormous energy, enthusiasm and eagerness to defeat Barack Obama.”
The delay provided more time for some delegates to plot against changes to the party’s nominating rules that Mr. Romney’s campaign tried to push through late last week. Mr. Romney’s top lawyer had proposed a process of selecting delegates to the 2016 convention that would make it harder for someone like Mr. Paul to collect support. But a growing group of grass-roots conservative activists said the extra day had given them time to mobilize support for their right to quash the effort by Mr. Romney’s legal team to give party presidential nominees more say over the selection of convention delegates sent by the states. Such a rule change would have taken the wind out of insurgent candidacies like that of Rick Santorum, who, until he dropped out, was counting on swinging uncommitted delegates to his side at the convention in a challenge to the presumptive nominee.
“This is the biggest power grab in the history of the Republican Party because it shifts the power to select delegates from the state party to the candidate,” Jim Bopp, a national committeeman from Indiana, said in a statement. “It would make the Republican Party a top-down, not bottom-up, party.” Such a change would have presumably also helped Mr. Romney, if he wins the presidency, to head off a potential primary challenge four years from now, some opponents said.
Aides to Mr. Romney said they were keeping tabs on the discussions about the rules changes and were anticipating possible efforts by some delegates to challenge the rules from the convention floor. “It definitely was helpful to communicate the message to the grass roots,” said A .J. Spiker, the chairman of the Iowa Republican Party and a supporter of Mr. Paul during the primaries. “The leaders of the Republican Party have an obligation to protect grass-roots activists.”
Mr. Paul’s supporters do not have enough delegates to seriously challenge Mr. Romney’s nomination, which will take place Tuesday in a roll-call vote. Convention planners hope that Mr. Romney will receive the number of delegates he needs to claim the nomination just as the 6:30 p.m. news broadcasts come on Tuesday. The upstart talk, reminiscent of the primaries, extended beyond the fight over the party’s nominating procedures. At a Tea Party “unity rally” on Sunday night, Herman Cain told attendees, “There were some people who hoped you all wouldn’t show up,” adding, “Y’all fooled them!” Mr. Cain, who endorsed Mr. Romney in May, had earlier said on CBS News that he would have been his party’s nominee if “everyone had competed fairly and honestly.”
But some of the real tensions that played out for more than a year during the Republican primaries remain as delegates gather for the convention. Mr. Romney’s advisers concede that those rivalries could play out during the convention’s early hours. Even when the Republican national chairman, Reince Priebus, gaveled the convention to order and unveiled two national debt clocks — a symbolic barb at government spending under Mr. Obama — a group of Ron Paul supporters were staging a demonstration in the hall with signs that altered the convention’s “We Can Do Better” theme so they read “Ron Paul Can Do Better.”

Jeremy W. Peters and Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.

“They want to make everyone think that we all are united behind Romney. That’s not true,” said Jeremy McReynolds, 25, an activist helping to organize Mr. Paul’s delegates at the convention.
Saul Anuzis, a delegate from Michigan and a Romney supporter, said those making “mischief” should settle down and fall in line behind Mr. Romney for the good of the party.
“What you would hate to see happen is they minimize the positives with all of their shenanigans,” Mr. Anuzis said.
“The reality is, it’s over.”

Jeff Zeleny, William Storey and Susan Saulny contributed reporting.