Sen. Ted Cruz is crushing Donald Trump’s delegate operation in yet another state, Missouri, according to well-placed party sources.
Trump’s operation to secure real supporters rather than notional ones to send to the July’s presidential nominating convention was caught napping and only activated in Missouri a week before delegate voting began. By the time the crucial delegate contests were over, the New York businessman found that the Texan tornado had left him in his dust.
It means, as with Cruz’s superior operations in Arizona, Arkansas and several other states, that Missouri delegates who must vote for Trump on the first ballot are really Cruz supporters who will defect if there is a second ballot and the Cleveland convention is contested.
Trump won the Missouri primary by a mere 0.2 percentage points, which meant he took 37 of the 52 delegates available. But party operatives say many of the 37 are likely to be under Cruz control and will abandon the New York businessman if he doesn’t win the nomination on the first ballot.
Missouri Republican insiders, and even local Cruz supporters, are mildly surprised that Trump didn’t up his game in the state. His top grassroots advisor there, Valinda Freed, is the sitting vice chairman of the Missouri Republican Party. She and other Trump supporters aren’t novices or as unfamiliar with the delegate process as their counterparts in other states the campaign bungled.
“Most of the people who are bellyaching — they have caucused before,” Bev Ehlen, a top Cruz organizer and a co-chairman of his Missouri campaign, said in a telephone interview. “There might be a lot of Cruz people in Cleveland. They might have to vote for Trump the first time, but that will be all there is.”
Freed referred a request for comment to Trump campaign Midwest regional political director Stephanie Milligan. Milligan acknowledged the Examiner’s request but at press time had not responded to questions relayed via email.
However, the Trump campaign over the weekend indicated unhappiness with the process in Missouri. Paul Manafort, the chief delegate strategist for the Trump campaign, said Sunday during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that a formal protest over the results of delegate elections in Missouri would likely be filed.
Trump is leading the overall hunt for delegates with 744, followed by Cruz at 559 and Kasich at 144. To clinch, a candidate needs to accumulate a 1,237 majority. Trump is expected to pad his lead on Tuesday with a big win over his rivals in the New York primary, where 95 delegates are at stake.
Trump won the March 15 primary in Missouri, defeating Cruz by just 1,786 in a contest that was so close it went to a recount and wasn’t called for weeks. Delegates were awarded five per congressional district and 12 for winning statewide. Trump, by winning five districts to Cruz’s three, and narrowly capturing the statewide vote, netted 22 more delegates than the Texas senator.
But as in most states, GOP rules in Missouri call for delegates to the quadrennial presidential nominating convention to be elected by their fellow Republicans. The process begins with county caucuses, open to all registered Republicans. The nearly 2,000 Republicans who emerge from those elections proceed to congressional district elections, and the state GOP convention, where they vote for the final delegate slate.
This process began April 9, and is now in the district elections phase, with the state convention, in Branson, to come May 20-21.
As in other states where Cruz has dominated, his campaign laid a foundation for success in delegate elections months ago, assembling leadership teams and dispatching field volunteers to establish relationships with local grassroots Republicans. That work included recruiting and fielding delegate candidates, in many cases without any competition from Trump or Kasich.
Lately, Cruz’s strategy has evolved to reach out to supporters of Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who suspended his presidential campaign on March 15, and integrate them into their teams.
Ehlen said she stays in regular touch with Rubio’s Missouri supporters and that the response from them has been positive. Republican voters in Missouri who previously supported Ben Carson — who endorsed Trump soon after abandoning his own presidential bid — also have been receptive, Ehlen said.
“It worked out really well for us last week at the caucuses — better than I expected, because the Trump people did not come in with slates,” Ehlen said. “With our numbers, it should be just maintenance from here on out; just making sure our voters are where there are supposed to be when they’re supposed to be there, because our numbers are just that strong.”
Republican operatives in Missouri expect Cruz to dominate district elections in six of the eight congressional districts, leading to a strong showing at the state convention in May. It likely didn’t hurt Cruz that his campaign manager, Jeff Roe, is based in Missouri and knows how to navigate the Republican grassroots there.
Trump is expected to do well in district delegate elections in the St. Louis-area 1st district, and Southeast Missouri’s 8th district, where his support in the March 15 primary was strongest. That’s not as bad as some states, where Cruz swept all available delegates. But it’s not considered good enough to carry Trump to the state convention with a chance to place loyalists on the final Cleveland slate.
“The Trump people, about eight days before the [county] caucuses — that’s when they really launched their effort,” Republican insider, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly. “It’s almost impossible to mount a mobilization for the caucuses on such short notice because it’s complex and there are so many rules. They tried, but not surprisingly, it did not end well for them.”
