Hilario Deleon is 23 years old. He is Latino. He is the chair of the Milwaukee County Republican Party. And he is having the time of his life this week.

Over the past couple days, I saw Deleon mingle with MAGA celebrities all over the Republican National Convention. He was thrilled to personally welcome to Wisconsin Lara Trump, the RNC co-chair who spoke Tuesday. “We’re going to continue fighting for your grandfather!” he exclaimed to her, before catching himself. “Oh! I mean your father-in-law!” She seemed charmed. “Well, you should be fighting for my grandfather, too,” she said.

Deleon is aware his biographical details make him an outlier, both at this ebullient Republican gathering and also in a Wisconsin county that went for Joe Biden by 69 percent in 2020. In fact, he suspects that might have something to do with why he has his job. And he embraces it.

Born and raised on Milwaukee’s south side, Deleon was in high school and didn’t particularly care one way or another when Trump was elected back in 2016. He decided against college, and he was washing dishes at a bar just before COVID-19 hit. Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, mandated a lockdown. Deleon, only 19 at the time, suddenly found himself at home and bored. “After I lost that job, I said to myself, ‘Well, shit. I got lots of free time on my hands. Might as well try out politics.’”

So he started volunteering with the local Republican Party. He explained that he had long been an avid Civil War reenactor, with a friend from high school. (He said the friend played Ulysses S. Grant, and he would play Abraham Lincoln’s son, Robert). He had met many local Republicans that way, turning him on to the party.

He tried to help organize a Wisconsin for Trump rally to counter the Democratic National Convention, which was supposed to be in Milwaukee that summer. Both were canceled because of COVID. But his efforts caught the Trump campaign’s attention. He received a call from a regional field director, offering him a job as a field organizer on the spot. “I was speechless,” he said. “What if I didn’t take that call? What if I didn’t pick up?” He accepted the job immediately.

“I learned a lot on the Trump campaign. It really shaped me,” he said. He was crushed when Trump lost. “In 2020, we were winning Wisconsin, then everything changed overnight. Early on, I bought into the stolen election theory, but now I focus on building the movement,” he said.

Deleon joined the local Milwaukee Republican Party, encouraged by the former county chairman. Soon after, a vice-chair position became vacant when a high-ranking member passed away. Deleon, still only 20, was surprised to be asked to fill the role. He said he thought his age and ethnicity probably played a role. “Maybe they thought my age was a good way to reach young people, but I also just kept showing up. People say, ‘Man, you’re everywhere,’ and I am,” he said.

This did seem accurate: I unexpectedly found myself on the phone with Deleon one week before the convention began after I called........

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