Cleveland Police: Protesters, Anarchists Expected At Republican National Convention
CLEVELAND (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Final preparations are underway in Cleveland for this week's Republican National Convention.
Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams says it seems "everyone is coming" to the city to exercise their First Amendment rights.
The Republican National Convention starts Monday, and Williams said in a Sunday appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation" he expects groups of all stripes to be vocal throughout the four-day convention when reality TV star and businessman Donald Trump presumably will be named the party's nominee for president.
Williams says he's hearing that anarchists, separatists, anti-Trump protesters, "everyone is coming to Cleveland to protest or exercise their First Amendment rights."
He acknowledged Ohio's open-carry gun law in assuring his force is committed to public safety, and said scenarios like the recent slayings of five Dallas police officers had already been included in police preparations.
On Sunday, one man had already visited Cleveland's Public Square armed with a semi-automatic rifle and a handgun to assert his Second Amendment rights.
A group called Northeast Ohio Open Carry had planned a noon rally Sunday in downtown Cleveland, but only 57-year-old Steve Thacker showed up with guns. He drew attention from news media as Cleveland police officers milled nearby and a line of around 60 police bicyclists took a break before pedaling off.
Thacker says he was trying to make a statement about his rights. He complained that fees and background checks associated with purchasing weapons results in the government "selling back" his privilege to buy and own firearms.
On Saturday, Trump named Indiana Gov. Mike Pence his official running mate. The two men are scheduled to formally become their party's nominees at next week's Republican National Convention.
"What a difference between crooked Hillary Clinton and Mike Pence," Trump said at an announcement event Saturday morning in New York.
Clinton's campaign released a statement after the official announcement saying, "We were prepared to respond with the many ways in which Mike Pence is the most extreme pick in a generation—a doubling down of Trump's divisive rhetoric and policies. But after publicly waffling over his own choice, Trump spent more time today making false attacks on Hillary Clinton—several of which could also be leveled against Pence—and talking about his own businesses than his own running mate. It turns out, you can force Trump to make a choice and give him a speech, he's always going to be Trump."
Campaign officials say the presumptive Democratic nominee is setting a national goal of persuading more than 3 million people to register and commit to vote in the 2016 election.
Clinton intends to announce the plan on Monday in a speech to the NAACP convention in Cincinnati, followed by a stop at an Ohio voter registration event with volunteers. She is kicking off the voter drive as Republicans meet in Cleveland to nominate businessman Donald Trump at their national convention.
The mobilization effort aims to capture the energy of Democrats watching the GOP convention from home each evening and harness it into a stronger voter base.
The Trump-Pence pairing was designed in part to bring together fractious elements of the Republican Party on the eve of its national convention.
Yet the usual trappings of a presumptive nominee's most significant announcement were missing in the Manhattan hotel ballroom where a few hundred supporters gathered Saturday morning. Nowhere in sight were "Trump/Pence" signs, for example, and Trump's decision had been tweeted the previous day, stealing any sense of surprise from the event. Choosing a venue in a state Trump has little chance of winning also broke with traditional politicking strategy.
Trump and his new running mate appeared on stage together only briefly before Trump disappeared and Pence gave a speech that closely hewed to the populist themes that Trump has voiced, describing himself as "really just a small-town boy." He praised Trump effusively as "a good man," a fighter, a legendary businessman and a patriotic American.
"The American people are tired," Pence said in remarks that included many of the same talking points that until recently he was using in his bid for re-election. "We're tired of being told that this is as good as it gets. We're tired of having politicians in both parties in Washington, D.C., telling us we'll get to those problems tomorrow."
Trump returned for a round of photos with the Trump and Pence families.
The lack of hoopla contrasted with Mitt Romney's introduction four years ago of running mate Paul Ryan on the deck of a Navy battleship, the USS Wisconsin, off the shore of swing-state Virginia. With cheering, flag-waving crowds and a soaring patriotic soundtrack, the pair faced the nation for the first time flanked by a massive red, white and blue banner displaying their new campaign logo.
The underwhelming rollout of the GOP ticket continued when Pence flew back home to Indiana without Trump. A few hundred people greeted him at a suburban Indianapolis airport hangar bereft of any "Trump-Pence" signs. He spoke for only a few minutes, telling the crowd that he and his family were headed home for "pizza night."
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus described Trump and Pence as being "somewhere in the middle of each other" and says Trump plans an engagement tour soon to attract Latino voters.
Be sure to stay with CBS2 through the week for complete coverage of the convention, starting with reports from CBS2' Marcia Kramer starting Sunday night at 11 p.m.
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