GOP candidates try to outwork and outthink rivals in sudden scrum for delegates

The Republican race for president has entered its hand-to-hand combat phase, a difficult and unfamiliar contest over individual convention delegates that may determine the party’s nominee for president.

It started Saturday in Missouri. It’s already underway in Kansas. Here and in other states, campaign aides for Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas are twisting arms and cracking open dusty rulebooks in a frantic push for as many loyal convention delegates as they can find.

In Independence on Saturday, Trump and Cruz supporters reached an uneasy stalemate, approving “unity” slates of delegates to represent them at upcoming district and state conventions. The votes kept the peace for now but may have set the stage for a fiercer struggle for national convention delegates when the Missouri GOP makes those choices in April and May.

The intricate delegate hunt is on because many Republicans — and impartial delegate-counters — now believe there’s a strong chance no GOP presidential candidate will have a majority of pledged votes when the primary season ends June 7. The talk accelerated last week after Cruz easily defeated Trump in the Wisconsin Republican primary.

“I believe there will be a contested convention,” said Republican Kansas state Rep. Amanda Grosserode, already chosen as a national convention delegate from her state. “It’s historic.”

And if no candidate locks in a majority of pledged delegates by the convention, delegate loyalty becomes crucial. On a second ballot and beyond, most national delegates can exercise free judgment in picking a presidential nominee.

“It’s not just a four-day infomercial,” said Chris Seufert, GOP chairman in Platte County.

Not everyone is willing to predict a contested convention just yet. Trump still has a plausible path to a majority of delegates by the start of the convention in July, and his chances may improve following primaries in New York and beyond.

Newly installed Trump strategist Paul Manafort predicted this weekend his candidate will have a delegate majority by June. If the businessman wins 1,237 firmly committed delegates, he’ll be the nominee.

If not, though, delegates will cast several votes for president. On the first ballot, the vast majority must vote as directed by primary voters this winter and spring, but after that they’re free to make up their own minds.

Additionally, delegates will be asked to determine the rules and credentials of the convention — who can be nominated, who can be seated, perhaps who gets to speak and when. Those decisions could also be critical.

“If you control the process, you control the outcome,” explained Eric Heberlig, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.

That’s why GOP delegates are more important than they’ve been in decades. And that means the leading presidential campaigns are now tirelessly looking for loyalists: delegates not only willing to stick with a candidate on nomination votes, but able to support the campaign on critical procedural issues as well.

To date, Republicans agree, the Cruz campaign has done a much better job of recruiting and placing loyal delegates than Trump. Cruz officials understand the rules, know where to find delegates and have out-maneuvered the front-runner at almost every turn.

Kansas is a good example.

On March 28, Republicans in the 3rd Congressional District, which includes Johnson and Wyandotte counties, held a meeting to elect three national convention delegates. Under the rules, those delegates would be bound by the results of the party’s March 5 caucuses — two delegates would have to vote for Cruz, one for Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

The Republican who got the most votes at the 3rd district meeting would get to pick the presidential candidate he or she would support. The top vote-getter was Grosserode, a well-known Cruz supporter, and she picked … Rubio, who has suspended his campaign.

Her decision was strategic.

Grosserode knew the other two delegates picked that evening would have to back Cruz and would have to stick with Cruz as long as he remained on the ballot. But she also knew Rubio delegates would likely be released before the convention, freeing her to vote for Cruz as well.

In a convention where every vote may be critical, Cruz quietly picked up a Kansas delegate that night.

Grosserode’s gambit wasn’t a secret. Yet Republicans say Trump’s campaign was furious when it learned of the maneuver days later, threatening a challenge at the convention.

Trump has accused the party of scheming to “steal” the nomination with similar tactics.

But Kansas Republicans say the Trump campaign has no case. Had Trump been paying attention, he could have conducted a similar effort and potentially captured the Rubio delegate slot.

Campaigns must know “who’s doing the electing, who’s up to be a delegate, how they’re selected, how they’re bound to the candidate,” said Clay Barker, director of the Kansas Republican Party. “Every piece of the puzzle makes a difference.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. In a tweet late Friday, Trump complained about the process.

“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 wrote.

The businessman’s supporters are worried.

“He’s got to cultivate the delegates,” former candidate and Trump supporter Ben Carson said on Fox News. “If you don’t play that part of the game, you’re going to lose 100 percent of the time.”

Stories like Grosserode’s have been reported in Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, Colorado and other states. “It’s pervasive,” Heberlig said.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich is less involved in the chase for individual delegates and has no mathematical chance of winning the nomination on the first ballot, unless the convention’s rules are dramatically changed. But his 143 pledged delegates could become critical if they’re released before the voting begins.

Rubio has 171 pledged delegates — including, for now, Amanda Grosserode.

There are signs Trump has started to realize the need to take part in the delegate-selection process. He recently named Manafort as his convention manager, expanding the GOP veteran’s role in fashioning the campaign’s delegate hunt.

“The nomination process has reached a point that requires someone familiar with the complexities involved in the final stages,” the candidate said in a statement.

And Trump campaign workers aggressively sought GOP voters before Saturday’s Missouri caucuses, the first step in delegate selection in the state. “It is time to SHOW ME TRUMP For Missouri!” said a Friday campaign email to supporters.

In Jackson County on Saturday, dozens of Trump supporters followed that advice. At the county’s morning caucus in Independence, they appeared to roughly equal the number of Cruz supporters on the floor.

As a result, neither side challenged the two “unity” slates offered by Jackson County Republican Committee chairman Mark Anthony Jones for the 5th and 6th congressional districts. Some Cruz supporters wanted the delegates on the slates to declare their presidential preferences first, but that effort was easily turned aside. A unity slate means neither leading candidate has an advantage.

Jones, who has been sympathetic to Trump in the past, said his slates were evenly divided between the two top Republican presidential contenders. “We’ve not stacked this one way or another,” he said.

The delegates picked Saturday in Jackson County, and more than 100 similar county caucuses in Missouri, will eventually choose the party’s national convention delegates. Once they’re in Cleveland, those delegates are bound to the results of the March 15 primary only on the first ballot.

Kansas delegates must stay with their pledges through all ballots unless they’re officially released by the candidate.

Trump is now expected to get 37 Missouri national convention delegates, Cruz 15. But those totals are based on projections from unofficial results of the March 15 primary.

The actual results won’t be certified until Tuesday. If overseas ballots and other changes flip the state from Trump to Cruz — a possibility, since the race was so close — Trump will lose 12 pledged delegates immediately. Cruz will gain 12 delegates.

In a normal year, a 24-delegate swing would mean little by the time the candidates reached the national convention. It’s been 40 years since Republicans held a contested convention, and even that nomination was decided by a single ballot.

This has not been a normal year. It may grow more abnormal by July.

This story was originally published April 9, 2016 at 3:39 PM with the headline "GOP candidates try to outwork and outthink rivals in sudden scrum for delegates."