RNC Brings Fame to Gen Z Party Leader

Hilario Deleon. Photo courtesy of the Republican Party of Milwaukee County.

Hilario Deleon, chairman of Milwaukee County’s Republican Party, apologized but had to take another call. A New York correspondent for a Catholic newspaper in France wanted a preview of this week’s Republican National Convention in the city where Deleon (South Milwaukee High, Class of 2019) grew up.

The 23-year-old Deleon says he was the youngest Midwest chairman of a local Republican party when he won what began as a six-candidate race in February 2023.

Although Deleon’s county is hosting the RNC, he doesn’t expect to formally welcome the delegates, alternates and national and international officials visiting Milwaukee this week from the podium. Instead, Deleon said he’ll be doing media interviews about Milwaukee, the convention and former President Donald Trump, whose campaign he worked for in 2020. Deleon has been a Trump fan since, at age 14, he watched Trump take that June 2015 escalator ride to announce that he would run for president.

Next week, major networks, a Japanese radio station and other news outlets have scheduled interviews with Deleon, who said he will welcome everybody to Milwaukee. Politico.com profiled him last week.

It took eight years, but Deleon finally met Trump on June 20. “He was so kind. There was no greater honor. He said I looked great, liked my suit, and asked how [pre-convention] things were going in Milwaukee.”

After the handshake and photo-op, Deleon posted this on his X account: “I will not rest until we win back the great State of Wisconsin and re-elect Donald Trump as the 47th president.” Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 but lost it in 2020.

Deleon and another Gen Z member, Dane County Republican Party Chair Brandon Maly, lead local GOP organizations in the two counties that overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. Milwaukee County Republican voters usually make up less than 30% of the countywide vote in statewide elections, for example.

While Maly vows to boost Republican turnout in Dane County suburbs, Deleon vows to take the Republican gospel to new neighborhoods and reach young voters like him.

“Republicans have had a hard time listening to people, and they may not like to hear everything that everyone has to say because there are some dark things going on out there,” says Deleon, who calls himself “half Hispanic.”

“This is the fight that I have with people in my party,” he adds. “Some of them don’t understand that, in order to win, we have to build a commonsense coalition of disaffected liberals, independents, Libertarians and Republicans.”

“I’ve been doing outreach to the Muslim community,” Deleon adds. He also led new efforts to reach students on the Marquette University, UW-Milwaukee, Milwaukee School of Engineering and Wisconsin Lutheran College campuses and to seniors and Hispanics.

“There’s 20,000 [Milwaukee County] Republicans that didn’t vote in that ‘22 cycle,” Deleon adds. Many of them simply felt “their vote doesn’t count,” since Democrats ring up such huge margins in Milwaukee County.

Why should Milwaukee County residents vote for Trump? Deleon cities high grocery and gas prices, crime, the surge of illegal drugs that “poison” and kill, growing numbers of homeless, failure to control the nation’s southern border and the threat of nuclear war because of what he called the weak international leadership of President Joe Biden.

“I don’t like seeing people suffer,” Deleon says. “I’m more worried about nuclear war than the changing climate.”

Deleon says Trump’s conviction of 34 felonies has had “no effect” on his chances of being elected President.

“That’s 34 more reasons why I’m going to vote for him,” Deleon says. “People feel that we’re living in a banana republic where the leader of the current government and his Department of Justice is going after their leading rival…Let the American people decide.”

Deleon also says the 81-year-old Biden is not healthy and acts “like a robot,” which has people “terrified.”

But Milwaukee County Democratic Chair Chris Sinicki dismissed concerns about Biden’s health. Sinicki wrote in the party’s newsletter about Biden’s recent visit to Milwaukee, “While I realize many of you have concerns with the upcoming election, what [local party leaders] witnessed was an energetic, upbeat and positive President.”

Democrats, meanwhile, plan anti-Trump messages on billboards and buses. Biden surrogates visiting Milwaukee will include Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.

Steven Walters started covering the Capitol in 1988. Contact him at stevenscotwalters@gmail.com