Donald Trump is explaining his recent loss in Colorado by once again blaming “the establishment” for introducing changes to Colorado’s delegate-selection process that would secretly undermine his campaign. But contrary to Trump’s conspiratorial claims, interviews with participants in the debates over the party’s rules make clear that establishment-backed candidates wanted to switch from caucuses to a primary. And contemporaneous news accounts demonstrate that there was nothing at all secretive about the changes.
“To the extent that there was any establishment influence to set what the rules would be, they were favoring a broad-based primary,” says Ryan Call, the former chairman of the Colorado GOP. Call supported Jeb Bush and later Marco Rubio, two candidates whose political operations were interested in ditching the caucus system.
