Donald Trump’s Republican convention unlike any other

CLEVELAND — Carl W. Toepel watched his first Republican National Convention in black and white.

It was 1952, and the scenes coming from his parents’ television in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, inspired him to trek from Chicago to San Francisco for President Eisenhower’s renomination in 1956.

“I got hooked,” said Mr. Toepel.

Sixty years and 11 Republican conventions later, Mr. Toepel said, he has never seen a nominee quite like Donald Trump — a political newcomer, businessman and showman who is making his mark in topsy-turvy times.

“He’s outside the box,” he said.

Though the real estate mogul’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” harks back to another time, his coronation in Ohio felt like a groundbreaking affair. The Jumbotron screens were bigger, the security was tighter and Twitter messages flashed across the top of Quicken Loans Arena.

It was a far cry from Mr. Toepel’s first convention, where he served as a doorkeeper at the “Cow Palace” in California.

“It has come from paper and pencil, and no to very little security, to highly sophisticated security and everything digital and technical,” Mr. Toepel said from the arena floor. “I’m the only one in the convention hall without a cellphone and without a camera, and I’m having a ball.”

Every national convention is different, and veterans of the party powwows say they have seen better attendance than in Cleveland, but the flamboyant nominee known as “The Donald” brought unpredictability to what is usually a festive fait accompli.

A plagiarism scandal erupted on Day One, followed by a testy roll call vote on Day Two, as “Never Trump” partisans gasped their last breath of revolt. On Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas infuriated Trump supporters by refusing to endorse the nominee, leading to a cascade of boos from the arena.

“I think you saw last night, the delegates are being very protective of Donald Trump,” Patricia Miller, a delegate from Indianapolis who has attended four other conventions, said Thursday.

“There’s never been anything like this that I’ve been a part of,” she said.

Mr. Toepel said he did see booing in 1964, when Barry Goldwater’s conservative partisans jeered New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller as an eastern liberal.

Yet the turmoil in Cleveland was a far cry from the 2012 convention in Florida, where attendees questioned the weather but not whether former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would be the nominee.

“In Tampa, it was just, ’Who’s speaking next?’” said Scott Louser, a delegate from North Dakota.

Mr. Trump capped his romp along Lake Erie late Thursday by emerging to music from the action film “Air Force One” and declaring himself the real agent of change whom voters were seeking.

Jeff Crouere, a delegate from Louisiana, said the four-day crescendo wasn’t anything like the 1988 convention at the Superdome in New Orleans, where he volunteered for the Republican Party, or his stint as a delegate to San Diego in 1996.

“Those were both coronations, basically. You had George H.W. Bush in the first one and Bob Dole in the next one,” he said. “There’s much more enthusiasm for this one. Bob Dole never generated much enthusiasm.”