Whether they’re planning to watch the Republican National Convention from home, venturing out with friends to see people’s reaction to what’s said and done in Cleveland this week, or actually walking the convention floor, members of the GOP from Butler County say there’s a lot they hope to see and hear.

The convention will be Monday through Thursday at the Quicken Loans Arena.

Larry Thompson, vice chairman of the county Republican Committee, said he is most interested to see how voting delegates cast their ballots during the party’s nomination proceedings. Thompson, who is a Donald Trump supporter, was critical of delegates who say they won’t support Trump, the party’s presumptive nominee, during floor votes.

“He (Trump) carried every county and every congressional district in this state,” Thompson said. “Those delegates are, in essence, not accepting the will of the people, and that’s a problem. It’s either ‘We the People’ or political parties.”

Trump devastated his opponents in Pennsylvania’s primary in April, winning 56.61 percent, or 902,593 votes, according to the Department of State, and 64 of the state’s 68 delegates, according to Politico.

In Butler County, Trump won a similarly decisive victory, winning 56.57 percent, or 20,054 votes.

Some of the drama surrounding nominating procedures ended Thursday, when the convention committee responsible for setting the party’s nomination rules rejected attempts to unbind voting delegates.

The plan by delegates objecting to Trump’s candidacy had been to use the rule-making process to allow delegates to vote for whomever they wanted on the convention’s first ballot. Under normal rules most delegates are required to cast their first ballot for the candidate who won their state’s caucus or primary.

Marci Mustello of Butler, a member of the GOP’s state committee since 2000, is an alternate delegate who will spend next week at Quicken Loans Arena. She doesn’t buy into the hype that Trump’s candidacy will transform the four day event into something unique.

“This is kind of the Olympics, Super Bowl and World Series all wrapped into one for a political junkie,” said Mustello. “I don’t really know what’s going to be different about this, or how it could be an different from the past ones I’ve been to.”

Mustello said she is most excited to hear from Trump’s running mate, revealed on Friday to be Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

Also, Mustello, who has attended every party convention since 2000, wants to hear more about how the party intends to defeat presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the fall.

“I think the thing I look forward to most is the speakers; their plans for victory in the fall and what role Pennsylvania will play. I know we’re going to be a key part of that path to victory,” Mustello said.

Other politicos from the county said they believed convention observers were in for a unique spectacle. Jack McMillan, the former county controller, expects the event to be “as unusual as any I’ve had an opportunity to view,” since he began watching political conventions in 1968.

That year Republicans gathered in Miami Beach and eventual GOP nominee Richard Nixon nearly fell victim to an internal effort to hand the nomination to first-term California Gov. Ronald Reagan.

“I’ve learned, like many people, not to try and predict what may happen when Mr. Trump is the master of ceremonies,” McMillan said. “But this is clearly a convention where the traditional process has been somewhat altered ... It’s Mr. Trump’s show, and I think that everybody is hooked in to see how he does.”

That show was shaping up to include an unusual cadre of convention speakers as of Friday — including the first woman to command a space shuttle mission, survivors of the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, and an underwear model.

Some party establishment figures — House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky among them — also will take the stage. But others, like 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain of Arizona as well as the party’s two living past presidents, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, will be skipping the event.

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., who is in a re-election campaign against Democratic challenger Katie McGinty, will be in Butler County at a campaign event on Monday and does not plan to attend the convention, according to his campaign secretary.

Other GOP observers in the county, like real estate developer Robert Heaton, say their interest in how a Trump-run spectacle could play out has been tempered by concerns over security and what they see as a potential for violence to break out, as protestors and anti-Trump demonstrators descend on Cleveland.

“I’m frightened. I’m afraid of what’s going to happen with the condition our country is in right now, with the factions based on skin color,” Heaton said. “I’m afraid there’s going to be problems — some of the old ‘burn, baby, burn’ things may occur.”

Grove City College professor Michael Coulter called the swirling security concerns a mainstay of any political convention, but especially next week, when areas designated for protestors will be closer to Quicken Loans Arena than convention planners and public safety officials had initially expected because of free speech lawsuits filed by protestors.

Downtown businesses and other institutions in the city, like Cleveland State University, are either shutting down for the week or urging employees to work from home. Dorms at Case Western Reserve had been opened to house about 2,000 police officers to provide security at the event, Coulter said.

“Modern conventions are just like magnets for protesters. It’s not seen on television, but it can be a complete zoo,” he said. “At the same time, modern political parties have learned to manage these pressures, so you’re not going to have a 1968 (convention) in Chicago again.”

In 1968 the Democratic National Convention in Chicago had anti-Vietnam War protests and ultimately sparked confrontations between police and protestors and underscored the party’s divisions over the conflicting views of then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey and U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy.

Coulter said that ultimately, the convention will be judged on how effectively Trump is able to unify the party. Trump has shown himself to be a master of social media and tapping into the “water cooler conversations,” that tend to be more important to presidential campaigns over the long term, Coulter said.

But a convention, with its often-unwieldy, formal processes and plodding pace, could test the real estate mogul’s skills.

“More than any one particular speech, we’re going to watch how well Trump uses this opportunity to consolidate support among Republicans and show he has support among a variety of Republicans,” Coulter said. “That’s Trump’s greatest challenge at this point.”