House Speaker Paul Ryan speaks at a news conference during the state GOP convention at the KI Convention Center in Green Bay on Saturday. Credit: Evan Siegle / USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

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Green Bay— Highlighting internal divisions on Donald Trump's presidential bid, some officials at the state GOP convention embraced the real estate mogul while others ignored his presence at the top of the ticket.

Gov. Scott Walker — himself a one-time presidential candidate — took the latter tack. He didn't mention Trump during his 30-minute speech and instead put the emphasis on U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson's re-election bid as if it were this year's marquee race.

"I want to tell you clearly, the Republicans in this hall and in this state are overwhelmingly united behind Ron Johnson to be our United States senator," Walker said. "You see, that needs to be our clear focus. That's where we can have the biggest impact."

He spoke at the KI Convention Center in a hall plastered with political placards — none of them promoting Trump.

But three of Wisconsin's GOP members of Congress took a different approach, explicitly urging people to back Trump. One of them said they needed to ignite the enthusiasm from Trump that they had in 2012 when they beat back the attempt to recall Walker from office.

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan of Janesville remained unwilling Saturday to say if he would endorse Trump. The two met on Thursday and he told reporters Saturday they are making progress on unifying the Republican Party.

"When it comes to the presidential election...we think it's important that we have real party unity, not party unity, but real party unity so that we go into the election at full strength," he said.

He did not say whether that could happen by July, when Ryan will chair the party's national convention in Cleveland.

"I don't have a specific time frame in mind," Ryan said.

Ryan sidestepped a question on whether he thought his children could look up to Trump.

"I'm not interested in going into the campaign litigating the past," he said. "I'm not focused on wading into the day by day commenting, you know, Internet back and forths....You know what my kids really care about? What kind of country are they going to get in the future."

For his part, Johnson said in an interview he doesn't agree with Trump on issues such as temporarily banning Muslims from the United States, but added he and other Republicans see eye to eye with Trump on most major matters.

"Economic growth. Securing the border. Defeating ISIS. Strengthening the military. The big issues, I think every conservative, every Republican, will rally around and unify," Johnson said.

Johnson, who didn't mention Trump during his convention speech, faces a re-election challenge from Democrat and former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold. Johnson took the seat from Feingold in 2010.

Feingold spokesman Michael Tyler criticized Johnson for backing Trump.

"Instead of listening and staying connected to the people of Wisconsin, Johnson seems to 'appreciate' the bluntness of Trump's racist, sexist and xenophobic rhetoric and appears happy to join the insider Washington Republicans who are falling in line behind the Republican nominee," Tyler said in a statement.

Johnson did not say whether he agreed with Trump that transgender people should use whichever bathroom they feel most comfortable with. President Barack Obama's administration told schools Friday they must allow transgender students to use the restrooms that they identify with.

"From my standpoint, there are enormous challenges facing this nation. I'm concentrating on other things," Johnson said. "I truthfully have not given it much thought. From my standpoint, I'd prefer states handle this state by state.

"Listen, it's a complex issue. There's no doubt about it. I don't have a good answer on it. It's a complex issue and you can sympathize with different viewpoints on it. Let the democratic process in the states weigh into that and not be crushed by the federal government."

Feingold supports the Obama administration's policy, according to his campaign.

Johnson said he was confident Trump would nominate a better U.S. Supreme Court justice than Merrick Garland, the judge Obama has put forward after conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died in February.

As he has in the past, Johnson said the Senate should not act on Garland so the American people can have a say in who should be on the court with their vote for president. But he declined to say whether he would be willing to quickly approve Garland if Hillary Clinton wins. That move would prevent Clinton from appointing someone more liberal than Garland to the court.

"What you're talking (about) is a hypothetical, and what I'm saying is I'm going to work hard to make sure that hypothetical never comes about," Johnson said.

Tyler said Johnson needs to "do his job" and "not weigh the partisan benefit of procrastinating until a lame duck session."

During his speech, Johnson described his re-election bid by invoking United Flight 93, the airplane that went down in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11. He compared the vote in November to the one the people on that flight took before deciding to raid the cockpit to try to stop the terrorists who had hijacked the plane.

"It may not be life and death...but boy is it consequential," he said. "I want each and every one of you to understand we're talking about saving this country."

While many of Saturday's speakers made only passing references to Trump, others urged Republicans to vote for him.

"Donald Trump has won our nomination fair and square," U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner said.

He told activists they need to back Trump to prevent having "three or more Ruth Bader Ginsburgs" on the Supreme Court.

U.S. Reps. Glenn Grothman and Sean Duffy made similar appeals, saying Republicans had to make sure they kept Clinton out of the White House. Grothman said Republicans needed to build enthusiasm for Trump.

"Like a Scott Walker recall, right? We've got to be that riled up," Grothman said.