GOP insiders sat the RNC out. Now millennials are taking over.

Tim Page has never been to a national political convention. But the landscaper from rural Burke County couldn’t resist the chance to help elect Donald Trump.

“When Trump entered the race it got me real excited,” said Page, 23. “I wanted to make sure our voice was heard and we did our part to get Trump elected.”

Page is one of dozens of first-timers in the North Carolina delegation at a convention dominated first-time convention attendees – at least their first as a voting delegate. And like him, many are young.

Trump may be a star in his own right. But on the convention floor, there aren’t a lot of recognizable faces among the 2,472 delegates. The number of outsiders reflects the support for Trump and GOP runner-up, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

“We need somebody who’s an outsider,” said delegate Joe Daughtery of Wayne County. “We need somebody who speaks ‘people-speak.’”

Other states are also seeing newcomers as delegates. Ed Martin looked around his Missouri delegation and didn’t recognize half the people.

Most big names, including six of the last seven Republican presidential nominees, have stayed away. The section of Quicken Loans Arena reserved for VIPs has been largely empty. Delegates sit in their seats during the speeches, rather than engage in the usual lingering and mingling that’s always been a staple of these affairs.

And speeches are seldom by big political names, but actors, Trump family friends and people with stories to tell about how the Obama administration ruined their lives.

This is a Republican convention unlike any in recent times.

This is Trump’s convention, all right, a gathering of outsiders and political renegades. So Melania Trump’s speech included parts of a 2008 Michelle Obama speech? The media’s blowing it up beyond reason, they say. Mike Pence seems lost? That’s OK, we’re here for Trump.

Trump and Cruz accounted for 56 of the North Carolina delegation’s 72 votes. Though Cruz supporters dominated the district and state conventions where delegates were elected, Trump attracted new people to the process.

“Trump has brought new people to the party who wanted to be delegates,” said Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the state GOP.

Alternate delegate Mona Rabin of Harnett County, whose husband Ronald was an early Trump supporter, said she wanted to become a delegate since hearing Trump speak.

“I really wanted to try to make a difference,” she said.

At the vanguard of this new sort of convention are hundreds of younger delegates. With the insiders declining to come, that opened a door for a new generation to emerge here.

They’re people such as Will Carter, 18, from Savannah, Ga. He got the political bug early. When he was 8, George W. Bush traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, for a Group of Eight economic summit. Carter was so taken with the trip that for his birthday party, he had a G-8 theme, complete with a birthday cake with flags of the participating nations.

Being here is a lifelong dream for him and many others. “It’s like Disneyland for political geeks,” said Sara Walsh, 37, from Ashland, Missouri.

She has been arriving at the convention early each day to get a seat near the VIP section. When former House Speaker Newt Gingrich walked by, she got a selfie with him. “THE Newt Gingrich!” she beamed.

The young delegates realize, though, that they’ve got a tough road ahead, particularly since the party insiders who usually would be here to help them aren’t. And there’s no guarantee that back home, they’ll be ready to organize and mobilize for Trump.

A McClatchy-Marist poll earlier this month showed that in a four-way race, including Libertarian Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein, Trump had 22 percent among those aged 18-29 and 27 percent among those 30-44. The older voters got, the better he did.

“As a whole, young people view Trump unfavorably, with young women and non-white youth … viewing him even more unfavorably,” according to analysis last month by CIRCLE at Tufts University, which studies youth voting.

Trump does well with younger people with no college degree, the study found, “but these young people tend to have a fairly low overall turnout.”

The millennial delegates are well aware of the challenge. “I would change our tone and tenor,” said Samantha Beeler, 28, a delegate from Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Jessica Fernandez, 31, a delegate from Miami, wears a “Log Cabin Republican” pin in the floor, support for the conservative gay rights organization. Gregory Angelo, its president, called the 2016 platform “the most anti-LGBT platform in the party’s 162-year history.”

“The party needs to move with the times,” said Carter.

Fernandez agreed, explaining, “We were enlightened in a different day and age.”

They’re here largely because of Trump. “We’re fed up with partisan bickering,” said Jack Pickett, 18, a delegate from Yakima, Washington.

There’s also a cadre of millennials who eagerly back the party’s opposition to same-sex marriage.

Elliott Kelley, 20, a delegate from Easley, S.C., was an enthusiastic supporter of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. “From the Bible, we can discern where we stand on social issues,” he said.

But one reason younger supporters hope friends will look to Trump is that, unlike many of his conservative rivals, he rarely dwells on social issues. Trump is regarded as sympathetic to gay rights, though his forces did little to soften the party platform’s strong stand against same sex marriage.

Trump also had something else going for him: A lot of the millennials grew up watching him on television. His shows, “The Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice,” aired from 2004 to 2015.

“I started watching in 2006, and I’ve been a fan of his ever since,” said Turner, the West Virginia delegate

Most of all, these delegates agree with Trump on economics and immigration. They want lower taxes, less government, a U.S.-Mexico wall and an end to partisan gridlock. And they enjoy hearing his blistering, off-the-cuff commentary. Finally, they say.

“It’s our message,” said State Rep. Justin Burr, 31, of Albemarle. “But amped up.”

This story was originally published July 20, 2016 at 6:23 PM with the headline "GOP insiders sat the RNC out. Now millennials are taking over.."