Tony Samuel Joins!

**Jason Hammer** (0:00)
My advice to you, start drinking Hammer.

**Nigel** (0:03)
The Hammer and Nigel Show.
93WIPC. My name is Nigel, Jason Hammer right over there with a very special in-studio guest.

**Jason Hammer** (0:14)
Who says talking local government can't be fun, right?

**Nigel** (0:18)
Not me.

**Jason Hammer** (0:19)
Tony Samuel joins us, our political insider. He was part of Trump's 2016 campaign, and every time Tony joins us in studio, when we got everybody together here, we know we're getting ready to talk local government. So let's get this party started with a little shotski.

**Nigel** (0:38)
We get lubed up here.

**Jason Hammer** (0:39)
Now, Tony asked if this was the Irish whiskey, and I had to break his heart and say, no, we drank it all already.

**Tony Samuel** (0:46)
Doesn't surprise me.

**Jason Hammer** (0:47)
This is what we got here, Nigel.

**Nigel** (0:48)
This is Bullet, I believe.

**Jason Hammer** (0:50)
Bullet. Oh, you're going for John Dutton on us.

**Nigel** (0:52)
That's right. Bullet with Butterfly Wings.

**Jason Hammer** (0:55)
Cheers, everybody. Here we go.

**Nigel** (1:01)
Hello. Hiya.

**Jason Hammer** (1:04)
Now I'm ready to talk about that Indiana GOP convention.

**Tony Samuel** (1:07)
That's smooth. Yeah, me too, I guess.

**Jason Hammer** (1:10)
You were there for that.

**Tony Samuel** (1:11)
I went up. I wasn't a delegate. I didn't try to be a delegate. I've been a delegate in the past. I've also been a national delegate twice. We can talk about that sometime.
But I wanted to go. I wasn't planning on it initially, but then I thought, man, this is a real show. I need to be up there and watch it and just take it in and actually to be able to talk to you guys.

**Nigel** (1:31)
Why was it a bleep show?

**Tony Samuel** (1:32)
Well, the funny thing is, it started to look that way, obviously, with the calls for Diego to be removed, the withdrawal of the endorsements from by Senator Banks and Attorney General Roqueta and Congresswoman Sparks, and just all the scandals and the controversies that he's had over the years that he's been in office, it all added up. So it looked like there was going to be a lot of craziness on the convention floor. It actually wasn't really like that. It was more subdued. The speeches Friday night and the speeches by the nominees on Saturday weren't, you know, like, rip roaring. They were fine. They were okay.
There wasn't a lot of enthusiasm from the floor. I think people were kind of fed up with the whole thing and just wanted to vote and wanted to get out of there. That was kind of the mood in the room.

**Jason Hammer** (2:35)
Well, it still took two rounds and five, you know, hours or whatnot to pick the Secretary of State candidate though, right?

**Tony Samuel** (2:42)
It took a long time. There were that they, you know, the ballots went through the machines, but then they also hand counted them for various reasons. So it took a while, but at least it didn't go to three ballots. That would have been nightmare.

**Jason Hammer** (2:56)
Before we get into the ramifications of Max Engeling winning, Diego finishing third, the incumbent, you were there, did anybody make an ass of themself?

**Tony Samuel** (3:09)
I did not.
And I might have stayed out a little bit later than I should have Friday night. There were the receptions and everything after the speeches Friday night, but no, I was good. And nobody really did. You know, there was, like I said, it was a little more subdued than you would have expected given the controversies.
There was talk about maybe Diego dropping out because he had such a poor showing the first ballot. He only got 283 and this is out of almost 1,700 delegates that showed up. And then, you know, he didn't drop out. The fourth place finisher, Jamie Rittenhour, with 135 votes only, she was eliminated, went to the second ballot finally after a few hours. And I think what happened was, you know, in my mind, I had mentioned this before, it really depends on who knows how to run a floor campaign, a floor fight. And the Max Engeling team, the banks folks and the other volunteers, different, you know, people that were behind him, they had more experience than the others. And so when he showed, had a good showing on the first ballot, Diego underperformed, they knew who to ask to get the votes. The Hamblin County Chair, Mario Maslamani, told his votes, he had supported Diego, told his voters they could, you know, go to Engeling, they did.