Cruz — Trump’s closest competitor — has been particularly aggressive, launching an ambitious, cross-country effort to influence local Republican Party meetings where delegates to the national convention are being selected. The objective: Ensure that individual states send Cruz-friendly delegates to Cleveland – people who would support the Texas senator in the event no candidate succeeds in reaching the 1,237 magic number on the convention’s first ballot. Under byzantine GOP rules, most of the national delegates are unbound and free to support any candidate following the first round of voting.
The nature of the delegate-selection process — a hyperlocal one that typically begins at the city or county level and is finalized at a state gathering — plays to the strengths of the Cruz campaign, which prides itself on its micro-targeting and number-crunching abilities. Chris Wilson, Cruz’s director of research and analytics, is helping to oversee the push, as is Saul Anuzis, a former Michigan Republican Party chairman who is steeped in the art of contested conventions. Joining them are a smattering of staffers who work the campaign’s political desk.
The campaign has begun screening potentially friendly delegates in Georgia, which will be holding county meetings on Saturday – one step in a multi-stage process in the state where delegates to the national convention are selected. In Virginia, which has already begun holding city and county delegate-selection meetings, former state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is helping to spearhead Cruz's activities.
"It's always important to elect conservatives to go to the national convention, but never more so than this year. So much of this process has been, and is still, being carried forward by folks locally,” Cuccinelli, who was involved in a 2009 contested state GOP convention, wrote in an email. “If no one wins on the first ballot, it's critically important that the people who go to Cleveland be strong supporters of Ted Cruz."
