Cruz netted 13 more delegates at Colorado’s state GOP convention. Trump suffered a critical loss to Texas Sen.
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“I think Trump is a bad whiner”, Mr. Hasen said.
He’s eyeing the mid-Atlantic primaries on April 26 as a moment for redemption.
“Trump is on pace to be the nominee”, Benton said. “We think the 26th will go a long way to resetting the narrative”.
Republican New York Chairman Ed Cox said he believed the state could decide the nomination.
Western New York supporters of Republican presidential candidate John Kasich met Wednesday night to begin organizing a grassroots campaign effort. If more than one candidate is still competing at that point, you have a contested convention. “This is a complicated process”. The hostility Cruz encountered should favour Trump, whose stomping ground NY is, even though the state itself is a write-off for Republicans in the presidential election. “United States of America!” at the rally, the Queens native quickly hit hard at Cruz, who has derided him for harboring liberal “New York values” because of his past support for Democrats.
Trump is poised to trounce his opponents in the NY primary on April 19, with the latest polls showing Trump with just over 50% of support – more than doubling Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Trump and his team had largely assumed he would have the race all but locked up after winning Florida in mid-March, and had largely failed to prepare for a potential fight at the convention.
But to win all of New York’s 95 Republican delegates, Trump will need to win a majority of votes both statewide and in each of New York’s congressional districts.
It’s not entirely clear why Trump fares so much worse than Cruz among young voters, but there are a few possible explanations. “His brand was television, it was real estate, it was a social and civic player in NY, and now he’s trying to take that to a new level politically”. We all know people that died.
Still, the masses of prospective delegates “are very confused about what’s going on right now”, said Stephens, a former Colorado House Republican leader and chairwoman of Kasich’s state campaign.
New York City Councilman Joe Borelli of Staten Island said he is helping the campaign secure large venues that can accommodate the scale of political rallies Trump has become accustomed to.
Colorado has already been good to Cruz.
“What you usually have is a pretty fair allocation, so I don’t see a lot of gamesmanship being played there”, Anuzis said. Most delegates are allotted based on the primary result in a particular state, and are committed to follow that result on the first ballot at the convention. “I view my job as making sure people get to understand and meet Donald Trump”. The regional differences are significant because California Republicans award almost all of their 172 delegates by congressional district, three delegates each to the victor of each district.
Manafort is also optimistic Trump will block Cruz’s chance of winning on the first ballot if the convention is contested.
Tricia Cunningham, a Western Pennsylvania volunteer for Trump, didn’t go that far. The idea is to convince Kasich supporters in peri-urban districts where Cruz is stronger to vote for Cruz, and to convince Cruz supporters in urban districts where Kasich is stronger to vote for Kasich.
Benton’s hoping the campaign will ramp up its efforts to counter negative advertising as well.
If you want to be a delegate in California, it would be smart to profess your loyalty to one of the campaigns because they are aggressively vetting potential delegates – a total of more than 300 people for each candidate, including alternates.
Ten of the delegates told The Associated Press that they support Cruz.
Davis insisted the Trump operation wasn’t anxious. “And he hasn’t hired people to do it for him”, said Pepple. “Now he’s having to retrofit and sort of realize, wait a minute, the quality of operatives I hire actually matters”.
For its part, the Trump campaign said Thursday it plans to announce several new hires and promotions in the coming weeks.
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Recent contests have shown Trump has struggled to close the deal with voters in the face of an onslaught of attacks from his rivals as well as the anti-Trump groups.
