A raucous contested GOP convention is now a certainty — or at least the presidential candidates and party top brass are treating it that way.
Republican officials are accelerating plans to deal with the kind of floor fight not seen in more than half a century. And Reince Priebus, the GOP chairman, is all but conceding that he doesn’t expect front-runner Donald Trump to secure a decisive majority of delegates.
Trump himself publicly dismisses such doubts. But he took the trouble Thursday to meet with Priebus in Washington for a briefing on how a contested convention would unfold.
“We are busy planning for every contingency in Cleveland so the Republican delegates can do their business in the most fair, open and transparent way possible,” Kirsten Kukowski, the Republican National Committee’s convention spokeswoman, told the Washington Examiner.
Trump led Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Gov. John Kasich in the battle for delegates, a product of the New York businessman having won more primaries and caucuses than his two competitors. The New York billionaire holds 736 delegates, compared to 463 for Cruz and 143 for Kasich. Under Republican National Committee rules, a majority, or 1,237, are required to win the nomination.
Trump’s prospects for crossing that threshold before the primary season concludes in June are dimming.
The reality television star is projected to lose Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary. Cruz, who leads in most polls, could win up to 42 delegates — and Trump none — depending on the breadth of his finish statewide and in the state’s seven congressional districts. There are only six more April primaries, in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, and its conceivable the available delegates could be split three ways.
“If Cruz wins Wisconsin, a contested convention becomes more likely because — it’s not so much that Ted Cruz won Wisconsin, but that he picked up extra delegates,” said Bill Whalen, a political analyst and senior fellow with the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank. “Every single delegate that he takes away unexpectedly from Donald Trump has to be made up somewhere else.”
The Republicans haven’t held a contested convention (party officials prefer the term “open”) since 1976, when Ronald Reagan challenged President Gerald Ford in Kansas City, losing on the first ballot. Since then, the quadrennial gatherings have functioned primarily as nationally televised pep rallies that promote the presumptive nominee. Over time, voters have come to view the primaries and caucuses as how the party chooses its nominee.
In fact, it’s convention delegates, in a vote on the convention floor, that crown the nominee, according to longstanding party rules. Candidates secure delegates through winning votes in the primaries. However, most delegates are only bound to support the contender they’re tied to on the first or second ballot taken on the convention floor. The campaigns, anticipating a fight to sway free agent delegates, are now racing to get them elected and corral their support.
“Everybody will be chasing delegates,” said Charlie Black, an experienced GOP operative who is advising Kasich. “And, not just your delegates or the ones bound to you — but all of them because we’ll have multiple ballots.”
Trump recently hired a team of veteran Republican operatives to run his delegate whipping operation in the states. This week, the real estate mogul brought on Paul Manafort, who was a part of Ford’s convention team back in ’76, to lead his convention strategy and run delegate outreach. Trump appears to have accepted the potential for a contested convention only recently, putting him at a disadvantage against Cruz.
The Texas senator has assembled a strong grassroots campaign, and that has carried over to his quiet but aggressive bid for delegates.
The Cruz operation is in the states working to get candidates for delegate elected that would be loyal to the senator once they’re unbound. The Cruz team also is angling to have loyalists placed on influential rule-making and selection committees. Some states allow candidates to appoint delegates, but most have elections where anyone can run. The contests tend to attract grassroots party regulars, another possible advantage for Cruz.
Arizona is prime example. Trump won the state’s GOP primary easily, scooping up all 58 of the available GOP delegates. But they’re only bound to the businessman on the first ballot, after which they’re free to support one of his competitors. The Cruz campaign is aggressively courting delegate candidates running for the 55 open slots in elections that will be held throughout April.
“We are doing everything we can, to get as many Cruz people as we can, to the state convention,” David Livingston, a member of the Arizona legislature and Cruz organizer, said, in regard to the April 30 event where the delegate slate will be formalized.
Usually the presumptive nominee scripts the convention.
In this case, it’s up to Priebus and RNC staff to develop a theme, determine which prominent Republicans are invited to speak, and in particular, how to fill prime time television coverage. Delegate votes to nominate the vice president and presidential candidates tend to occur on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, the two final days of the four-day gathering. But that could change as Priebus preps for the possibility of multiple rounds of balloting.
In the interim, the RNC has unveiled a new website to educate voters and the media on the RNC rules that would govern a contested convention. Priebus and his lieutenants are holding a series of conversations with the top campaigns and the national press corps to ensure the process is accurately understood and portrayed.
Among Priebus’ important procedural decisions is picking a chairman for the influential convention rules committee. The panel, which meets the week before the Cleveland convention and is made up of convention delegates, could determine which candidate, or candidates, has the edge in any floor fight.
The rules committee chairman serves solely at Priebus’ discretion.
