Chris Suprun is a member of the Electoral College from Texas, a state the GOP can reliably count on to deliver votes every four years to the Republican presidential nominee.

But this year, with Donald Trump sitting atop the ticket, Suprun is warning he might not cast his electoral vote for the GOP standard-bearer. Indeed, he won’t rule out throwing his vote to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton if Trump doesn’t moderate his demeanor.


“I’m not a professional politician. I’ve got no training on this one,” said Suprun. “The nominee is … saying things that in an otherwise typical election year would have you disqualified.”

It’s a startling admission two months before an election, and another sign of the lingering discomfort among Republicans with Trump’s candidacy. Another Republican Texas elector, Art Sisneros, told POLITICO last month that he had initially considered casting a ballot for someone other than Trump, part of a larger plan to sow chaos, but decided against it when other collaborators failed to earn spots in the Electoral College. And when a Georgia Republican elector, Baoky Vu, told a local reporter that he might consider a write-in candidate rather than backing Trump, he quickly resigned his post. Vu later told POLITICO that he had intended to highlight the existence of the Electoral College as a “safety valve” against candidates like Trump.

The Electoral College, the constitutional body conceived by America’s founders as a check on voters, meets five weeks after Election Day to cast the formal ballots for president and vice president. States send one elector from each congressional district and two representing the state at large.

Though it originally played an outsize role in the process, it’s long since morphed into a glorified perch for party regulars, donors and insiders to ratify the results delivered by voters. In fact, 29 states have laws forbidding electors from bucking the will of their voters, according to FairVote.

But 21 — including Texas — have no binding restrictions.

Even in states without laws, “faithless” electors have been extremely rare in modern history and have never had a decisive role in any presidential election. They’re unlikely to this year either, unless Trump claws back into contention and battles Clinton to a near-draw.

Still, it’s remarkable for a likely member of the body to openly discuss taking a vote of conscience two months before an election. POLITICO interviewed 20 Republican electors earlier this month and found a slew of Trump critics among them, but none who planned to vote against him if he won their state.

For Suprun, one of the first responders who rushed to the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, the reluctance to cast a vote for Trump is due to the nominee’s security rhetoric. Suprun characterized Trump’s approach on military issues as: “The generals are going to commit war crimes because I tell them to.”

Suprun said he ran for elector with the intention of supporting his party’s nominee. But he lamented that the institution had become a “check-the-box” routine. He also argued that his home — Texas’ 30th Congressional District, centering on Dallas — is likely to support Clinton. That, he argued, should be a factor in his obligation to represent the district in the Electoral College.

“These constituents aren’t supporting Mr. Trump,” he said, arguing that the Founding Fathers charged electors to “take a look at all the facts, figure it out and make the right call.”

Could Clinton be the right call for Suprun?

“I would never say never to anything,” he said.

Steve Munisteri, former chairman of the Texas GOP and the 2012 leader of Texas’ Electoral College delegation, said it’s not uncommon for electors to hint at rejecting their party’s nominee. He said three Texas Republican electors in 2012 suggested they might vote for Ron Paul instead of Mitt Romney. But when reminded of oaths they took when running for the position, all of them eventually cast their ballots for Romney.

“Remember, electors don't vote until after the election, so the pressure not to vote for Clinton will be enormous,” Munisteri said.

Texas Republican Party officials were not immediately available to comment on the record.

Suprun, a self-described conservative who had reservations about the moderate candidacies of John McCain and Romney — ran for elector as part of his effort to mark the 15anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. He was among a group of first responders and service members who threw out first pitches at a Yankees-Angels game to mark the 10th anniversary of the attacks. He helped found the “Never Forget Foundation” and has spent the 15 years since the attacks traveling the country doing emergency-response trainings and discussing his experience at the Pentagon. That led him to pursue a seat on the Electoral College, he said.

“I got into the process trying to focus some attention and debate on the anniversary of Sept. 11,” he said.

Suprun argued that the country hasn’t rallied together in the aftermath of tragedy in the same way it did in 2001, and he said both major parties seemed to forget those lessons. Republicans, he said, in particular were likelier to think of a more recent tragedy that occurred on the same date — the 2012 attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans at an American compound in Benghazi, Libya. “When you say 9/11, it’s not 9/11/01, it’s 9/11/12, and everything reverts to Benghazi,” he said. “Even in the Republican Party, I’m not sure 9/11 means 9/11 fifteen years ago as much as it does 9/11 four years ago.”

Democrats, he added, barely talk about terrorism at all.

But Trump, he said, didn’t pass his conservative test.

“I’m still amazed he made it through the process,” he said. “I’m not sure who his voters were or how they identify him with what I would consider Republican principles of small government.”

Suprun said he’s still hopeful Trump moderates his rhetoric and finds message discipline.

“I see a lot of process stories about — ‘Hey, Trump did something right. He went down to Louisiana and handed out supplies,’” Suprun said. “Of course, [the next] morning, the tweet I see is, he’s slapping Joe and Mika.”

“I think last week he started to make some positive steps,” he said. “Can we string one or two days together?”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.