Donald Trump or any other candidate who hopes to clinch nomination at the Republican National Convention may have to reckon with “free agent” delegates who can vote as they please, a top GOP official confirmed Wednesday night.
“If a candidate were to drop out, those delegates would become unbound,” RNC chairman Reince Priebus told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “So you’d still not be able to count that delegate as a bound delegate, so it’s still up to the candidate themselves to accumulate a majority of bound delegates before the convention. So, dropping out wouldn’t create a bounty of bound delegates. It would simply create more unbound delegates that are basically free agents on the floor.”
RNC rules require that a presidential candidate win 1,237 delegates, during the primary season, in order to secure the nomination on the first ballot at the convention. If no one does that, then the delegates, depending on a variety of rules, are free to vote for alternative presidential candidates on successive ballots, based on their personal preferences.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s exit from the race put a spotlight on another issue as well: now that he’s gone, the delegates who were bound to vote for him are free to vote for someone else on the first ballot.
Hannity teed up the question by warning of a convention revolt if “the establishment comes in and they try and say, ‘well, let’s get a consensus candidate'” and nominate someone other than Trump or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Priebus pushed back on the idea that he can pull strings at the convention. “I can’t carpet the world and tell candidates what to do and not do,” he said. “So to your point, though, that’s why it’s really important for the party to play it straight, to not play games, to be transparent and say these are going to be the rules and when the time comes that we know whether we’re going to have an open convention or not, that everyone understands moving forward that the preparations are made and everyone’s included in those conversations.”
“And when you get to Cleveland, if that were to happen, you want people to at least say, when they walk away, okay, they played it straight,” he added.
