Ivanka trumps everything for FHSU student Tanner Tempel

[SaifulIslam01]

HAYS, Kan. — It was a whirlwind week for Kansas’ youngest representative at the Republican National Convention.

Tanner Tempel, a Garden City senior agriculture business major at Fort Hays State University, was an alternate delegate for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. One of the highlights for the 22-year-old Tempel was taking a selfie with Ivanka Trump, daughter of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. That picture garnered lots of attention.

“As you can imagine, there’s an absolute wall of Secret Service,” surrounding Ivanka, Tempel said. “I wanted a picture with her, so I yelled out to her, ‘Hi, beautiful.’ She started smiling, and she moved her Secret Service security for me — that’s how I got that [picture].”

CNN took a photo of Tempel taking his selfie with Ivanka in the telegram number list background and posted it on the news organization’s Instagram account.

“People kept sending it to me,” Tempel said. “I’ve had a lot of people at the convention come up to me. I showed it to one of the CNN reporters and said, ‘You guys kind of made me a southwest Kansas celebrity.’ ”

Pretty heady stuff for a college student who only just recently decided to take a dive into politics in a serious way. Tempel saw a story online about young people not getting involved with politics,so he decided to drive to Salina in April for the Big First district meeting where convention delegates were chosen.

While others wrote speeches and had lobbyists on their behalf in an attempt to become delegates, Tempel went another way. “I just spoke from the heart,” he said.