Insider game could overshadow voters as GOP picks nominee

Published 1:30 pm Wednesday, April 27, 2016

WASHINGTON – John Kasich has stopped campaigning to win next week’s Republican primary in Indiana. But the Ohio governor can still rack up more Hoosier delegates than either Donald Trump or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz when the GOP nominates a presidential candidate in July.

In this unusual election year, the will of the voters doesn’t always translate into votes of all-important convention delegates.

GOP delegates from Indiana, Georgia and elsewhere said in interviews that they are concerned about Trump dooming their party. And if his string of primary victories don’t earn him the 1,237 delegate votes necessary to lock up a nomination at the party’s national convention, delegates freed to support whomever they choose say they are likely to back Kasich or Cruz.

It doesn’t matter if Trump won their states’ primaries.

The controversy over Indiana’s delegates illustrates the high stakes nationally of an insider game of deciding who will go to the convention.

While Indiana doesn’t vote until next week, its Republicans have already picked 57 people who will represent them in Cleveland. Those delegates will be be bound to support candidates, in the convention’s first vote, based on who wins the statewide primary and in each of the state’s congressional districts.

After that, Thomas John, of Indianapolis, said 30 to 40 of the state’s delegates are more philosophically aligned with Kasich than Trump or Cruz, and they could back him if Trump doesn’t win the nomination on the first ballot.

John said he, too, is leaning toward backing Kasich on a second ballot.

Carol McDowell, one of three delegates from Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Goshen and South Bend, said many delegates she knows in the northern reaches of the state “are saying Kasich if that opportunity arises.”

McDowell said she hasn’t decided whom to support on a second ballot, if there is one. But she’ll heavily weigh the winner of her district’s vote.

It could be a moot issue by the time Republicans convene. Trump’s primary victories in Pennsylvania and four other Northeastern states on Tuesday pushed him closer to the votes needed to lock up a nomination in the first round.

Trump has amassed 953 delegate votes – more than three-quarters of what he needs – with 10 primaries left on the calendar.

But Kasich and Cruz have said they’re teaming up to stop that from happening and force a rare, brokered convention. Kasich said he’s not campaigning in Indiana, as Cruz steps up appearances and brings in volunteers to stop Trump in the state.

Trump has said Cruz’s campaign, in particular, and party activists are filling delegate slots with people who won’t represent the will of the voters and are out to stop his nomination.

He has called the system of selecting delegates “rigged.” His supporters are infuriated.

John and some other pro-Kasich delegates from Indiana say they’ve gotten threatening emails.

In Kentucky, where Trump won the state’s March 5 primary with 36 percent of the vote, some of his supporters complain that convention delegates selected at the party’s state convention – including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Gov. Matt Bevin – are not actually Trump supporters.

Trump appears to have fared better in Pennsylvania, where he won this week’s primary with 57 percent of the vote.

Under the state’s unique system, Trump collected 17 delegates for winning the popular vote. But he also won 30 delegates elected from congressional districts. Those delegates’ allegiances did not appear on the ballot, leaving campaigns to try to tell voters whom they should pick.

Trump’s share of Pennsylvania’s 71 delegates – at least on the convention’s first ballot – appears to be greater than his portion of Tuesday’s popular vote.

However, three Cruz supporters and six members of a “No Trump” ticket were elected, as well, even though Trump won the areas where they are from.

The selection of delegates has also raised controversy in Georgia, where Trump won the March 1 primary with 38.8 percent of the vote – enough to be awarded 42 of the state’s 76 delegates in a first-round convention vote.

But Cruz, who finished a distant second, is likely to get support from more than just the 18 delegates awarded to him should a nominee not be chosen on the first ballot.

At least 16 delegates selected by party members either held positions on Cruz’s state campaign, or said in interviews over the past week that they’re likely to back the Texas senator on a second ballot.

In four of Georgia’s congressional districts, even though Trump won the vote, the majority of delegates selected either volunteer for Cruz’s campaign or have said they will support him if the convention stretches past the first vote.

Cruz supporters, for instance, packed a meeting of Republicans in suburban Atlanta and helped put two of their members in the district’s three-person delegation.

“If Trump does not win on the first ballot, there’s no doubt in my mind he’d lose delegates from Georgia in the next ballot,” said state Sen. Michael Williams, the Trump campaign’s co-chairman in Georgia.

Debbie Dooley, a Trump supporter who lost her bid to become a delegate, posted a You Tube video that showed Trump supporters storming out of a party meeting, carrying an American flag.

She said she’ll back anybody but Cruz as the campaign continues because his organization “disenfranchised” voters by working to get his supporters named as delegates.

In a handful of states, such as Oklahoma, delegates are bound to follow the will of voters on all ballots at the national convention.

A number of other delegates interviewed said they will vote at the convention – for multiple rounds – for the candidate who wins their area.

Party activists deny that the process is unfair.

In many cases, Cruz and Kasich simply outmaneuvered Trump.

B.J. Van Gundy, who chaired the meeting where Dooley protested, said Georgia Republicans chose representatives for those district meetings, laying the groundwork to select national delegates, in February.

“We’re required to advertise the meetings. Everybody is invited. Nobody is told not come,” he said. “The fact is Trump wasn’t paying attention in February.”

Said Williams, Trump’s co-chairman in Georgia: “Cruz was definitely more organized than we were.”

Kery Murakami is the Washington, D.C. reporter for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at kmurakami@cnhi.com. CNHI Pennsylvania reporter John Finnerty contributed to this story.