Getty New Hampshire GOP cancels vote on blocking Trump allies from convention posts

The New Hampshire Republican Party, under pressure from Donald Trump’s supporters, has canceled a controversial planned vote on a slate of delegate committee assignments that would have left Trump’s supporters off all the influential committees at the national convention in July.

The committee assignment vote was being conducted by email and slated to be completed by noon Monday, but GOP Chairwoman Jennifer Horn emailed the state’s delegates on Monday to say the vote had been canceled. Instead, she invited delegates to an in-person meeting on Friday at the party’s headquarters.

Trump won 35 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary in February — more than double his closest competitor’s total — but the slate distributed by the New Hampshire GOP over the weekend left his delegates off the Rules, Permanent Organization, Credentials and Platform Committees. Those slots were filled entirely by delegates assigned to Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Ted Cruz.

The slate installed Horn, who is not officially linked to any candidate but has criticized Trump, as the chair of the delegation.

Trump’s campaign won 11 of the 23 delegates slots via the primary — a plurality but not enough to stop the slate from being pushed through if the rest of the delegates voted as a unified group.

Stephen Stepanek, who served as Trump’s co-chair in the state and is a national delegate, hailed the canceled vote “as a victory for not only Donald Trump, but for the New Hampshire Republican Party.”

Delegates first heard from state party officials on Saturday evening about the slate and were told to vote by Monday at noon. Stepanek called the idea of an email vote “flawed in so many ways it’s amazing.”

“The first we heard of this radical new way of voting was when we got the email saying voting had started,” Stepanek complained.

Horn and Stepanek have tussled since last fall over some of her public criticism of Trump — she called his Muslim ban “un-American” — when he first called for her resignation. He renewed that call on Monday.

“I believe her sick obsession with Donald Trump has clouded her judgment to the point where she cannot execute the duties of her office in a fair and impartial way,” he said.

Rick Wiley, Trump’s national political director, also cheered moving the vote to Friday but stopped short of criticizing Horn.

"We appreciate Chairman Horn rescheduling the vote for committee assignments to the 2016 Republican National Committee Convention so it can occur in person,” Wiley said in a statement. “Transparency in these elections is important and we are grateful for Chairman Horn’s decision. We look forward to continuing our working relationship with Jennifer as Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee.”

Horn did not return a call for comment.