President Barack Obama on Friday told donors that Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz were doing Democrats a “favour” by exposing extreme views within their party on issues such as immigration and national security.
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In the seven congressional district conventions held in the state over the past week, Cruz won all 21 delegates at stake.
Cruz has prevented Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump from winning a single delegate in Colorado.
The Trump campaign said it was not anxious and had always expected to fare poorly in Colorado because its assembly process is dominated by party insiders.
“I don’t know if Donald Trump has an operation here”, said Congressman Ken Buck, the chair of Cruz’s statewide effort here.
Cruz is trailing Trump by close to 40 percentage points in New York – 56 percent to 20 percent – in the latest Quinnipiac University poll of New York Republicans.
In most years, electing delegates is something of a formality.
Keeping up his tussle with Mr Trump over values, the ultraconservative Mr Cruz told the Colorado crowd it is easy to talk about making America great again – “you can even print that on a baseball cap” – in reference Mr Trump’s campaign slogan.
The Democratic and Republican candidates are fanning out across the delegate-rich state daily. 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. He downplayed any expectations that they would pick up additional delegates to vote Cruz on a second or third ballot at the national convention.
Mr Trump holds a wide delegate lead nationally, but there seems to be a real chance no-one will claim a majority of Republican delegates before the convention.
Said Paladino, a Buffalo-based businessman: “We’ve seen people just coming up saying, ‘Where has he been?’ Thank God he’s here”. Ted Cruz in California, a new poll shows, one of the final primary contests before the Republicans head to the party’s convention in July.
Delegates get their first opportunity to choose a candidate by voting according to the way their respective primary voters voted. “Dozens of volunteers have been working since December” in Colorado, said Congressman Ken Buck, who’s chairing Cruz’s Colorado campaign. Only a candidate who doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the Constitution – and specifically the First Amendment, which prohibits the federal government from abridging the freedom of the press – would make such a threat. Please, if you believe in limited government, vote Cruz.
“I’m not going to be rioting in the street”, Ms. Cunningham said. Members of the slate had strategized with Rep. Ken Buck, Cruz’s Colorado chairman and a veteran politician well-connected among the state’s Republican primary electorate.
Indeed, there were some vocal Trump supporters among the roughly 500 who attended the weekend gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition, but they were in the minority.
After all, “If neither Trump nor Cruz can get to 1,237 delegates, there’s got to be a Plan C” in which some other candidate can be put forth. They will work to insure that their delegates block any such change. “But 100 percent of the voters didn’t vote for Trump, so there’s clearly some wiggle room and room for judgment”.
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The leaders of the Never Trump movement should think long and hard about what they’re trying to do, and whether they’ll still feel good about a spite campaign on the morning of November 9, when former Secretary of State Clinton becomes President-elect Clinton.
