This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes, the first high-profile Utah politician to embrace presumptive nominee Donald Trump, failed to win a delegate slot to the Republican national Convention, but that hasn't kept him away from Cleveland.
Hughes strolled into the Utah delegation's breakfast gathering at a hotel in Akron, Ohio, early Monday and made the rounds.
"How could I stay away from it? I hear there is a fight coming. How can I stay away if there is a fight?" joked Hughes, a boxing aficionado.
He's offered himself up to the Trump campaign as a surrogate and plans to visit with the delegations of other states while in town. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is doing the same thing.
Hatch, who sponsored the breakfast, asked Hughes to speak. Knowing he was speaking before a crowd that views Trump skeptically, Hughes said: "Vote your conscience, but at the end of the day we can not have Hillary Clinton as the president of this country or I'm afraid we'll have a country that doesn't look anything like what we've enjoyed."