On Friday and Saturday, Michigan Republicans elected the state’s national delegates during the state’s GOP convention in Lansing. Yesterday, Cruz won 21 of Colorado’s delegates.
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On the Republican side, Trump holds a wide delegate lead nationally, but there seems to be a real chance no one will claim a majority of GOP delegates before the national convention in Cleveland in July.
All three presidential campaigns – those of Cruz, Trump and John Kasich – handed out sample ballots, providing a slate of names with the number to each candidate.
If Cruz sweeps all 13 statewide delegates – an outcome many Cruz backers in Colorado see as possible – he would walk out of the state with more delegates than he picked up in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary. Seeking to capitalize on this, Cruz has outmaneuvered Trump lately in the behind-the-scenes battle for delegates in places that don’t assign them through traditional primaries or caucuses.
Trump, who has widely been reported as a divisive force within the Republican party, was viewed as “very favorable” by 29 percent of respondents, the highest for any of the three candidates.
These delegates were won at congressional conventions over the past week culminating on Friday.
“The momentum against Trump at the activist level is just frothing”, said Josh Penry, a former state senator who was Marco Rubio’s state chairman in Colorado.
Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary during George W. Bush’s administration, wrote an letter to Trump on Wednesday listing five things the candidate must do to move from a popular outsider to a viable contender.
One such event was held at the Knickerbocker Club on New York’s East Side last week, the traditional home of the city’s patrician class.
Kentucky Republicans selected six delegates to the Republican National Convention on Saturday who say they are not committed to a particular candidate if the nominating process reaches a second ballot.
It would be little more than a political footnote were it not for the fact the words also represent the thinking of many in the Republican party.
Kasich’s delegate director in Michigan, Jeff Timmer, said the Cruz campaign broke their end of the deal when they tried to win all eight delegation seats.
“Charlotte County voted for Trump, so I’d be inclined to support the county”.
While 66 per cent of people said they would still vote for the party at a general election, 34 per cent were open to the idea of abandoning the GOP in the eventual contest. “Nowhere in America, including Colorado, are insiders the heart and soul of the Trump campaign”.
Trump tweeted, “Isn’t it a shame that the person who will have by far the most delegates and many millions more votes than anyone else, me, still must fight”.
Trump has been trying to beef up his team’s delegate expertise, recently hiring convention veteran Paul Manafort to organize and implement his convention push.
Maree Miller, of Cairo, Ga., reacts to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as he speaks to supporters during a rally at Valdosta State University February 29, 2016 in Valdosta, Georgia. “This is small. And based on the way our caucus system works, it actually makes it unfair for hard-working Americans to actually go to the caucus”.
Other supporters of Trump at the convention repeated familiar reasons for liking him: They say they think he’s honest, that he “can’t be bought” because he’s already rich.
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At the same time, Mizel said she was relieved that the Trump campaign now seems to grasp the gravity of the task before them as they prepare for the possibility of a contested convention.
