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Cleveland • From Aimee Winder Newton's perch at the back of the convention floor, Donald Trump started on the right note.

Newton had come to Cleveland seeking reassurance about the man whose incendiary, pompous personality left her worried that for the first time in her life she might not be able to support her party's presidential nominee.

Then Trump came on stage and said he "humbly" accepted the nomination. And though his exhaustive and dark address would still give her pause, Newton felt confident by the end that she could make a decision.

"I can do this," she said.

Four days earlier, as the convention got underway, Newton had not been so certain.

The 42-year-old Salt Lake County council woman was part of the delegation from Utah, home to Trump's most embarrassing defeat. And now the state's delegates were being asked to make the country's largest leap.

Newton is conservative and deeply religious. Her Mormon faith taught her to be kind and trustworthy, to speak well of others and not to ostracize those who don't share her beliefs.

The new leader of her party had extramarital affairs and has been divorced twice. He maligned his opponents and called for a ban on Muslims. If Newton was going to support her party, she feared she would have to put aside her principles.

Newton and many of her fellow Utahans came to Cleveland hoping that a last-minute crisis of conscience among her fellow delegates would prevent Trump from getting the nomination.

Still, Newton didn't consider herself a Never Trumper. More like a Maybe Trumper. She was looking for a bit of humanity, a semblance of humility, something that felt right and could inspire her to follow Trump's leadership.

When she bumped into the husband of Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn, one of her political role models, she thought maybe he could help.

"Help me, why did you decide to support Trump?" Newton recalled asking.

"We really want a president who could be a role model for our children. So this is really hard for us."

Chuck Blackburn said what many who know Trump say: He's different in private. He's not mean. The bombast goes away. He can be gracious and kind. Blackburn said Trump had endeared himself to his wife.

"All of these things are helping," Newton said. Maybe she would see this side of Trump during the convention. Maybe she could offer her support.

Newton hoped to get a little closer when Melania Trump spoke on the first night. She listened intently as Trump spoke of her husband's strength, his love and loyalty. The audience applauded politely. Newton and her delegation were not impressed.

"She comes out and here she is, 24 years younger than her husband," Newton said. "She's his third wife. He's still had the affairs. She didn't tell us anything more about him. It just makes him seem like he can't relate to anyone but the elites."

—-

Politics has defined Newton's life. She ran for student body president in high school, helped to lead the College Republicans and served on a nine-person county council that had five Republicans and four Democrats.

They worked together. In a recent fight over how to try to fix the criminal justice system, the Republicans went along with a Democratic plan after a deal to cut a half-million dollars from the budget. A compromise. This was how democracy was supposed to function, Newton said.

"I don't know if I understand what is going on in the rest of America," Newton said on the floor of Quicken Loans Arena on the second night.

The rest of her delegation was with her.

"Make America safe again? I feel safe," said Casey Voeks, 27. "My kids are able to go out all the time and we never lock our doors. Make America great again? Our lives are pretty great. We don't feel like the country is as bad as they are making it seem, at least not in Utah."

Voeks worried most about what he saw as a shift away from the federal government's core principles. President Obama's health care law seemed like overreach, as did the nationalization of school testing standards.

"We are proof that local, small government works," Voeks said. Nonetheless, he was able to acknowledge good things about Obama. He was a good father to his children, and had good intentions.

"He's a good man," his friend David Kyle, 35, said. "Unlike Hillary."

"It's true," Voeks said. "Obama's wrong. But Hillary's evil."

Trump, Voeks said, might be clueless. Voeks worried that so much of Trump's campaign was about asking voters to trust him, that the candidate never mentioned freedom or the Constitution.

"If he did those things, I might be able to vote for him," Voeks said."Until then, I don't know."

As he spoke, the rest of the crowd was being roused to a standing ovation for Donald Trump Jr. But the Utah delegation stayed in their seats and fiddled with their phones. Newton went to dinner. Voeks laughed and wondered who cared.

Their stance against Trump went beyond political dissatisfaction. And, Voeks said, it might have been emboldened in Northeast Ohio. Most of the delegation belonged to the Mormon Church. Twenty miles away from Cleveland, in Kirtland, Joseph Smith had started a settlement - only to face prejudice and discrimination that forced the church to move and move.

Because of that history, the talk during this campaign of singling out a group based on religion held a particular sting for Voeks.

"People kicked us out or ordered our extermination. So when we hear a man talk about banning an entire group of people, be it Muslims or Hispanics or refugees, we take it seriously," he said. "We know what it's like. It's not a joke."

—-

The next morning, the Utah delegation piled into rental cars and buses for a trip to visit Kirtland.

As the rest of the delegation finished lunch, Newton rode a mile east to the Mormon religion's first temple with her father, Kent Winder, and her brother, Mike. On the way there, she brought up Donald Trump Jr's speech. She had been moved to hear the younger Trump discuss how his father had insisted that his children learn how to operate heavy machinery. She also appreciated the elder Trump's affinity for construction workers.

"It made him seem like he had some good values," Newton said. "It seemed like he raised good kids. I know a lot of that is attributed to his wife, but I was really impressed by them and his work to keep them grounded."

"I'm getting closer," she conceded.

A tour guide came to meet Newton's family, along with a couple who came with the convention delegation from Hawaii. All of their eyes widened when they walked into the house of worship, its walls covered in white with 100-foot high ceilings and large, Gothic windows that let in bright beams of light.

The group sat in the pews while the tour guide told the story about the first service, of its large crowds of dedicated believers coming together and singing the hymn "The Spirit of God like a Fire is Burning."

At the end of the tour, Newton's father asked if the group might be able to get the chance to sing the song. Newton took to the old piano in the corner. The guests from Hawaii gave the pitch. Their voices blended together and bounced off the walls as they joined to sing an iconic song of their faith.

As they walked out of the church, the visitor from Hawaii approached them.

"Oh, you're from Utah?" she said. "You've been having a hard time."

"We're trying," Newton told her. "We really are."

The delegate told Newton that she, too, had a hard time getting comfortable with Trump until she read some of his books. And when that wasn't quite enough, she read Ivanka Trump's book. The books helped to show her that Trump had a sense of fairness and spirit, true American values.

Mike Winder offered that when Trump first publicly considered running for office, he read the mogul's first political tome, "The America We Deserve." It spoke of renegotiating trade deals, being tough on crime and battling terrorists.

"I actually thought, he'd be a good president then," Mike Newton said. "Over time, the rhetoric changed."

"I think you can get there," the delegate from Hawaii said. "We have to. We're Republicans."

As her father started the car engine, he told his children, "I have to say, visiting this temple will be the highlight."

—-

Before coming to the floor on the third night, Newton and the delegation started getting emails from Utahans complaining about their lack of enthusiasm.

So when someone handed a sign that said "Make America First Again" to Casey Voeks, he took it. But he couldn't bring himself to lift it up. Too embarrassing.

"It's so close to Make America Great Again and I can't stand it," Voeks said. But then Voeks saw a man with signs saying, "America Deserves Better than Hillary." Those were words he could get behind.

"This is great marketing for Utah," Voeks said. "A sign I would wave, proudly. It says nothing about Trump."

Voeks ran to the other side of the convention floor to pick up as many as his hands could hold. Team Utah snatched them up. As Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker spoke, many in the delegation stood with a newfound enthusiasm.

When Walker abbreviated the phrase to "America Deserves Better," Voeks shouted back, "THAN HILLARY."

Now, the delegation was buzzing. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Voeks's preferred candidate and Newton's second choice after Sen. Marco Rubio, Fla., was coming up soon. The delegation was crowding the aisles. They whooped until Cruz quieted them. Voeks clasped his hands when Cruz told the story of a 9-year-old girl who lost her dad in the police shooting in Dallas. He nodded along as Cruz discussed the Bill of Rights. He erupted in high-pitched shrieks when Cruz told the crowd to "vote their conscience."

But, if the delegates were looking for Cruz to help resolve their dilemma, they would be disappointed. Cruz's mind on Trump did not seem to be made up either, and the rest of the crowd booed the delegation's most-liked candidate off the stage.

Newton was a fan of that night's star, vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence, but the hubbub following Cruz's appearance was too distracting to focus on Pence. Newton was too busy discussing whether Cruz's speech was honorable or selfish. Voeks walked off the floor.

—-

On the fourth night, Newton was captivated by Ivanka Trump.

She clutched her heart as Trump's daughter told stories of playing with Legos in her father's office and described how the Trump Organization gives equal pay to women. Finally, a sign of the sensitivity that Newton had been searching for all week.

Soon, the man himself would appear on stage

Newton wanted to see his heart. Voeks wanted to see his brain.

All around, convention staffers passed around signs, "Millennials for Trump," "Women for Trump," "Make America Great Again." The delegation mostly passed them around and around because no one wanted them. Newton took one to be a team player.

But then Trump started to speak. His initial expression of humility struck a tone that Newton had never expected.

She and her fellow delegates applauded when he talked about addressing crime and putting American needs at the forefront.

Then Trump began talking about his policies on immigration. Newton stopped clapping entirely when he talked about banning people who came from other countries compromised by terrorism, as did most of the delegation. Was this the introduction of the darker Trump they didn't like?

Then, a reprieve. He talked about the importance of appointing conservative Supreme Court justices. Trump thanked religious and evangelical groups for their support.

"I'm not sure I totally deserve it," he said.

There was an audible gasp in the delegation. "He knows?" one said.

Newton looked to the women who sat next to her.

"I love that," she said. "I love his self-awareness."

Voeks's cellphone rang immediately after Trump's speech concluded. It was his father, wondering if he had "converted to Trump." Voeks said he wasn't sure. But as balloons and star-shaped confetti rained down on the convention floor, encasing everyone in helium-filled blobs of red, white and blue, Newton took to her cellphone and smiled for a selfie.

"His brutal honesty might be the thing I hate, but I'm starting to realize it can be the thing I love," she said. "Sometimes, we just have to compromise."

She took a deep breath and said: "I'm in."