State Rep. Laura Brod will be there as a first-time delegate, a John McCain supporter and part of the unofficial welcoming committee to thousands of Republicans who will be arriving in Minnesota today and Monday.

Neal Breitbarth will be there as a conservative who was originally skeptical of McCain but is now increasingly comfortable with the man the Republicans will make their presidential nominee in St. Paul this week.

Jon Kovaciny will be there as an unrepentant Ron Paul supporter, rejected as a delegate but still eager enough to see the Republican National Convention in person that he became a volunteer at the Xcel Center to be near the action.

“What a tremendous opportunity this is for our state — not just for Republicans, but for our state,” said Brod, a New Prague Republican who represents Le Sueur County and part of Sibley County in the state House. “It’s such a wonderful opportunity to showcase our state.”

Brod has risen to a leadership role in the state House and in her party, but this is her first national convention.

The key to a successful convention, Brod said, will be to demonstrate to Americans that the GOP hasn’t run short of solutions to the nation’s challenges.

“The Republican Party is a party of ideas,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve done a good job of communicating those ideas.”

Although Minnesota Republicans favored Mitt Romney in the Feb. 5 caucuses, and there were factions who strongly supported Rudy Giuliani, Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee, the party is now in harmony, according to Brod.

“The Republicans are for the most part pretty well unified behind John McCain,” she said.

Breitbarth, a Fairmont businessman, concedes it took him a while to warm to McCain. In fact, Breitbarth wasn’t fully persuaded until seeing the Arizona senator on the televised forum two weeks ago from California’s Saddleback Church.

Breitbarth ran for a delegate spot last spring when he decided the Minnesota GOP was in the process of sending too few true conservatives to the RNC. But Breitbarth said McCain at Saddleback, talking about his opposition to abortion and other issues important to social conservatives, was clearly speaking from his heart.

“That really did a lot in strengthening my conviction to see to it that John McCain is elected,” he said.

Breitbarth will be attending his third national convention after helping nominate Bob Dole in San Diego in 1996 and George W. Bush in Philadelphia in 2000. He’s no less thrilled to be driving a couple of hours to an RNC as opposed to flying to the East or West coasts.

“No, it’s actually more exciting,” he said.

Breitbarth won’t need to worry about figuring out how to get around the convention city, and he wants to show off the Twin Cities to fellow Republicans from around the country. Plus, as always, he’ll love hearing from an all-star lineup of Republican speakers that includes Bush, Cheney, Schwartznegger, Giuliani, Romney and more.

While Breitbarth is a long-time Republican activist, Kovaciny is a rookie.

A Bethany Lutheran College employee, Kovaciny wasn’t politically active until this year when Paul, the Texas congressman with the libertarian bent, sought the Republican nomination. Kovaciny felt Paul would return the GOP to its small-government, conservative roots, and he and other Paulites spent the cold days of January waving Ron Paul signs at busy Mankato intersections, passing literature door-to-door and organizing supporters to attend the caucuses, an event he’d never participated in previously.

Paul didn’t win in Minnesota, but he carried Blue Earth County.

Kovaciny, who’s volunteering for Republican candidates in other races, said his support for Paul appeared to keep him from being selected as a delegate to the RNC. Still, he wants to see the convention and hopes to be a delegate in the future.

For this year, he’s willing to be a volunteer — giving directions to the delegates and media members who will be swarming the Xcel for the next four days. Kovaciny will be there just for Wednesday and Thursday, working from 4 p.m. to midnight, because he’s going to attend a Paul rally and related events Monday and Tuesday.

Kovaciny sees the convention as the final lesson in his crash course in Republican politics.

“This seems like a unique opportunity, since the convention is close to home, to see how the process works all the way to the top,” he said. “... It should be quite a show.”