Chalk up one victory for Team Never Trump; Rep. Grosserode will carry power into GOP convention

Amanda Grosserode is Team Never Trump. Normally, the opinion of one of a rural state’s legislators wouldn’t matter much outside of her own state, if that, during a presidential nomination process, but 2016 is proving to be anything but a typical election year.

Grosserode, a Kansas state representative from Lenexa, served as co-chair for the Ted Cruz presidential campaign in Kansas. She caucused for Cruz, helped organize a massive Johnson County Cruz rally leading up to the March 5 Kansas Republican caucus. Her candidate won the majority of caucus-goers’ votes in the 3rd District, which includes Johnson County. And Cruz won the entire state.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump took second place in the Kansas caucus, but he didn’t do well enough in the 3rd District to win any delegates. The Sunflower State’s 40 delegates cast their votes in proportion to the votes presidential candidates received at the Kansas caucus. Of the 3rd District’s three delegates to the Republican National Committee convention, two delegates are bound to cast votes for Cruz at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer, and one, Grosserode, is bound to Rubio. That’s by design.

In her six years as a Republican Kansas legislator, Grosserode has largely stayed away from endorsing candidates up and down the ticket. She’ll walk neighborhoods and pass out literature for other Republicans, but for the most part, she’s stopped short of formally endorsing other candidates.

This year and this presidential campaign are different, however.

“There’s so much at stake, and I felt like I had a role that I could play with that being the case,” she said. “I really disliked what I was seeing from the front-runner, and I felt like conservatives needed a high-profile alternative.”

That’s how she ended up introducing Cruz at a rally that landed her on national news stations and why she campaigned to be elected as a delegate to the national convention, and if possible, to be bound to Rubio. In the 3rd District, grassroots Republicans selected three delegates from a lengthy list of self-nominated Republicans. As the highest vote-getter in the delegate election, Grosserode was able to choose for which of the two candidates she would like to be bound. She chose Rubio.

The rules for bound delegates differ from state to state. In Kansas, for example, all of the Sunflower State’s delegates are bound to individual candidates based proportionally on the percentage of votes the candidate received at the Kansas caucus March 5. In other states, delegates are bound to specific candidates until a certain round of voting, at which point their state rules may allow them to be released to vote for someone else.

Kansas’ delegates are bound to a candidate until the candidate releases them. Cruz and Trump are unlikely to release their delegates, but others, like Rubio and Kasich may.

There will be 24 Kansas delegates bound for Cruz, including the votes of Kansas’ committee man and woman, Todd Tiahrt and Helen Van Etten, and the state’s chair, Kelly Arnold. Nine Kansans will be bound to vote for Trump, one delegate will be bound to Kasich, and six Kansas delegates will be bound to vote for Rubio. A presidential candidate must receive 1,237 delegate votes at the convention in June to secure the nomination, but it’s possible none of the GOP candidates will reach the threshold.

The delegates may choose the Republican presidential candidate on the convention floor, which means the seven delegates selected from Kansas who are bound to Rubio and Kasich may become major power brokers this summer.

Several of those power brokers have yet to be selected. Six statewide delegates will be elected sometime in May, and Grosserode is working to find and elect Kansas candidates who will vote for the most conservative candidate in a brokered convention.

The Trump campaign doesn’t appear to have a ground game.

“They don’t understand the process,” Grosserode said. “They’ve had so much free media for so many months they’ve never had to traditionally campaign. I do not believe the Trump campaign was active at all in selecting delegates.”

Despite the media or Trump narrative, the establishment doesn’t choose the delegates. Those are chosen by precinct men and women, who are largely grassroots activists. These are people the Cruz campaign is rallying in state after state.

“The choosing of those delegates is incredibly important,” Grosserode said.

Although the delegates adopt the convention rules at the start of the convention, Grosserode says it’s unlikely the Republican nominee will be someone other than one of the two leading the delegate counts — Cruz or Trump.

“Am I part of the Never Trump movement?” Grosserode asked. “Yes. I will not support Trump.

“I am Cruz or bust, but until I am completely released, I will be bound to Rubio.”

This story was originally published April 12, 2016 at 6:12 PM with the headline "Chalk up one victory for Team Never Trump; Rep. Grosserode will carry power into GOP convention."