The Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump will kick off the Western Conservative Summit in Denver this Friday as part of a larger effort to shore up support for his candidacy among traditional conservative voters ahead of the party’s July 18-21 national convention in Cleveland.

The convention, hosted by the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University, is a major annual conservative-politics event. Last year, seven Republican presidential candidates took turns firing up 4,000 activists from around the country with speeches extolling God, guns, small government and personal liberty.

Institute Director Jeff Hunt told the Colorado Statesman on Wednesday that he had been in talks to bring newly victorious Colorado GOP U.S. Senate candidate Darryl Glenn to the event. “Darryl had a booth at the summit last year and was campaigning even then. Talk about a guy working hard, talk about a winning formula,” said Hunt.

Glenn won primary voting that wrapped Tuesday, defeating a raft of candidates looking to unseat first-term Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet. Glenn was endorsed by Trump campaign rival Ted Cruz and by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is scheduled to appear with Trump at the summit and who Hunt said requested to be introduced by Glenn.

The summit this year is scheduled to draw the largest number of attendees since it launched in 2010.

“It’s going to be something to see,” Hunt said – a nod partly to the fact that politics on the right have been especially unpredictable and fraught this election season and to the fact that the summit will host both high-profile Trump supporters and detractors.

Going rogue

Trump is scheduled to open the three-day event with an hourlong speech in the morning on Friday and then attend a luncheon fundraiser hosted by former Denver Broncos head coach Mike Shanahan and former MillerCoors chairman Pete Coors. Local Trump supporters, including former Congressman Tom Tancredo and congressional candidates Casper Stockham and George Athanosopolous, have planned a 1 p.m. outdoor rally Friday at the Capitol to welcome him.

Trump will be introduced at the event by Palin, an early and ardent supporter, who praised him in an endorsement speech in January for succeeding in his candidacy by “going rogue, left and right, man.”

“We need someone new … to bust up the establishment to make things great again,” she said, speaking in a barn on the Iowa State University campus. “They’re wailing that Trump and his, uh, Trumpeters, aren’t conservative enough … [We] right-wingin’, bitter clingin’, proud clingers of our guns, our god, and our religions, and our Constitution – tell us that we’re not red enough? Yeah, coming from the establishment. Right.”

The summit may see similar combative speechifying.

Also scheduled to attend are Trump detractors such as Erick Erickson, founder of influential conservative blog Red State, and Ben Sasse, U.S. senator from Nebraska.

Erickson has called Trump a “pro-abortion liberal masquerading as a conservative, who preys on nationalistic, tribal tendencies and has an army of white supremacists online as his loudest cheerleaders.”

Sasse, the sole Republican member of the Senate to hold fast in his opposition to Trump, has said he doesn’t believe Trump will “take the oath of office in good faith,” and has called him a “dishonest New York liberal.”

But the summit crowd was always going to be a tough one for Trump to win over completely, partly because it will include a large number of Colorado conservatives.

In April, Colorado Republican officials and grassroots Christian and so-called movement conservatives teamed up at the state GOP convention to deliver a gut punch to the Trump campaign. They backed Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in a landslide. All of the state’s 34 delegate spots to the national convention pledged support for Cruz. Colorado Trump supporters managed only to fill seven spots on the alternate-delegate list.

In the months since the state convention, Trump has done little to win hearts and minds here. His appearance at the Summit will be his first in the state as a 2016 presidential candidate since October, when he came to Boulder for a presidential primary campaign debate. And so far Trump has left it to the Republican National Committee and the state Republican Party to run his Colorado general election campaign.

“It has been an amazing feat, getting all of these people to come – the coalition of people coming together,” said Hunt, laughing. “They’re all very passionate people, obviously. Even [Speaker of the House] Paul Ryan was impressed. I was just talking to him and he was impressed – but gathering people together, that’s a big part of the vision of the summit.”

Still, Hunt says he hopes even this year’s intense electoral politics won’t dominate the proceedings. He said the aim is to do something that will be “truly energizing and spiritual.”

The best and the brightest

“Last year we had a lot of stump speeches,” Hunt said. “This year, I was very interested in inviting thoughtful conservative experts, the best and the brightest.”

Hunt ticks off names of scheduled speakers, some who are members of familiar conservative organizations – the Heritage Foundation, the Friedman Foundation, the Becket Fund – and others who are conservative media regulars, including security policy analyst Frank Gaffney, anti-abortion activist Lila Rose and commentators Hugh Hewitt and Dennis Prager.

Hunt earned a bachelor’s degree from Westmont Christian college and a Master of Divinity degree from Fuller Theological Seminary. He said this year’s sixth annual summit will “lean into faith foundations a bit more.”

“I’m doing a stronger push to make it clear that the summit is an event hosted by Colorado Christian University,” he said.

Sunday, the last day of the event, will be given over largely to worship. Hunt asked Los Angeles megachurch pastor John MacArthur to deliver a barn-burner sermon at the summit’s Sunday service that would set hearts alight.

“I told him to really bring it, and he did,” Hunt said. “He wrote a sermon on ‘God’s candidate.’ It’s great.”

Summit attendees will be asked to participate in a vice-presidential straw poll. Hunt said he’s thinking of including Sasse’s name on the list of choices. “That would be fun,” he said.

Also on the list of summit guests: Arkansas U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, Colorado U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, Duck Dynasty reality TV star Phil Robertson and political activist Star Parker.

And also on tap: Principles of Liberty Colorado will give out its annual local legislator award at the summit Saturday night; and the summit will announce the winner of a “30 Under 30” speaker contest sponsored by the Centennial Institute and Red Alert Politics that has drawn more than 4,000 video submissions.

The summit is being held at the Colorado Convention Center.

– john@coloradostatesman.com