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View Full Version : How is Cruz 'wooing' delegates away from Trump won states?



EE_
10th April 2016, 06:52 AM
It sounds like bribery. Can they be won (bribed) back?
Could Trump show up at the convention with a handful of 1 year contracts to hire delegates for his corporation, at say triple their salary, if they pledge back to Trump?
Of course, there will be a clause they don't know about when they show up to their new job, that disqualifies them for taking political favors.


Cruz-Supporting Delegates Picked in Virginia District Trump Won
By Paul Elliott Apr 10, 2016 000

"I'm going to pledge for Ted Cruz with the information that I have today", announced one delegate. Cruz-backed slates have already swept several congressional-district votes, and by all accounts he'll win the rest.

A spokesman for the state's Republican Party told The Columbian in an earlier interview the state GOP has invited Trump, Cruz and Kasich to visit the state, but has yet to hear back.

He would need to win almost 60 per cent of all the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination before the convention.

"Trump would be least-popular major-party nominee in modern times", blared a Washington Post headline late last month, after its poll revealed cringeworthy negatives, starting with his 67 per cent overall unfavourable rating. "Among the activists, the tide has turned against him dramatically".

Additionally, with the candidate scheduled to address the Colorado convention on Saturday ahead of its vote, Cruz backers said they believed they had secured loyalty pledges from a majority of the delegates running at the convention.

Democratic presidential hopefuls, too, were focused on New York's big trove of delegates.

"Morality is about how you act, how you speak, and how you carry yourself", Merlos said in interview after his brief speech in Arvada.

"If Donald Trump is the nominee, it is an absolute disaster for Republicans, for conservatives and for the country", the Texas senator declared, charging that Trump would jeopardize control of the House and the Senate and tilt the balance of power at the Supreme Court away from conservatives. "He contradicts himself on everything".

Three of the 37 delegates are so-called superdelegates who the Republican National Committee chooses.

"He confuses intimidation and bluster with straight talk and honesty".

"It really reeks of inside politics and that is upsetting a lot of people", said Gary Emineth, a Bismarck businessman and former chairman of the state GOP party. (Trump backed off that position after an uproar from opposite sides of the political spectrum).

The national online poll from April 4-8 showed that 42 percent of Republicans support Trump, compared with 32 percent for Cruz and 20 percent for Kasich. He said he can remember tears coming down his face when he learned as a child that most of his father's family had been killed in the Holocaust.

Beyond the simmering anti-Trump sentiment here, Cruz's strength in the delegate chase in Colorado (as well as states like North Dakota, Louisiana and Tennessee) has once again exposed the deficiencies of Trump's organizing operation, which is scrambling to catch up.

"It's not a natural constituency for Ted Cruz, but over time, he's won the war of attrition for some of these folks", said Kellyanne Conway, a Republican operative leading a pro-Cruz super PAC.

Regardless of what they do on Election Day though, 16 percent of Trump supporters say they will leave the Republican Party if someone else gets the nomination even though the real estate magnate has the most delegates.

The Cruz campaign has methodically recruited supporters to run as unbound delegates in places such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia and plans an intense push to persuade those who will have a vote on the convention floor. Part of the reason: billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a key member who hosts the event at his Venetian hotel resort, was the top political spender in the last presidential race, pouring $90 million of family money into that campaign.

Tri-County Sun Times http://thevillagessuntimes.com/2016/04/10/cruz-supporting-delegates-picked-in-virginia-district-trump/

EE_
10th April 2016, 08:07 AM
It's good for people to see how crooked, corrupt and rigged elections are. After this one is over, there will never be enthusiasm and the kind turn out of this one, again.
If there ever is an election again, people will stay home and just let the dictator's decide, since that's the way it is done anyway.
All I can do is hope violent revolt will take place, right after the elite make their choice at the convention.

Trump’s getting trounced in Indiana
The state hasn’t even voted and convention delegates are already lined up against the front-runner.
By KYLE CHENEY 04/09/16 07:50 AM EDT Updated 04/09/16 09:04 AM EDT
160408_donald_trump_1160_gty.jpg

Should Donald Trump lose Indiana it would mark another blow to Trump’s chances should the convention go to a second ballot.

Indiana hasn’t cast its ballots for president yet, but Donald Trump is already losing.

Republican Party insiders in the state will select 27 delegates to the national convention on Saturday, and Trump is assured to be nearly shut out of support, according to interviews with a dozen party leaders and officials involved in the delegate selection process. Anti-Trump sentiment runs hot among GOP leadership in Indiana, and it’s driving a virulent rejection of the mogul among likely delegates.


“If Satan had the lead on him and was one delegate away from being nominated as our candidate, and Donald Trump was the alternative, I might vote for Donald Trump,” said Craig Dunn, a local GOP leader who is running to represent Indiana’s 4th Congressional District at the national convention in Cleveland. “I’ve always wanted to own a casino, but he couldn’t give me a casino and have me vote for him.”

Indiana GOP insiders are working to engineer slates of delegates — three from each of nine congressional districts — that will turn their backs on Trump at a contested convention in July. Another 27 will be elected at a state committee meeting next week.

Indiana’s delegates will be bound to the results of the state’s May 3 primary on the first vote in Cleveland, and Trump is expected to be competitive in that contest. (There is no current public polling of the state, but several GOP leaders suggested he'd be competitive in at least a couple of the state's nine Congressional districts.) But if Trump fails to clinch the nomination, they’ll be free to vote their conscience — and that means a rapid rejection of Trump. The state’s Republican national committeeman, John Hammond, has vocally called to reject Trump as well.

That would mark just another blow to Trump’s chances, should the convention go to a second ballot as expected. Though he’s won more votes and state primaries than rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich, Trump has failed spectacularly to win separate delegate selection battles to his better-organized rivals. Though in most cases, he’s lost because of Cruz’s superior organization, Indiana appears to be a break from the norm. Most of the hostility to Trump there is homegrown.

“I believe we need a candidate that is likable, and I believe we need a candidate that is electable. And at this point, I have not seen any evidence for a general election that Donald Trump is electable,” said Kyle Babcock, a veteran Indiana GOP insider who’s on the 3rd Congressional District delegate slate. Babcock said Trump is his third choice among the three remaining candidates. He’s leaning toward Kasich, he said, because he prizes electability and reclaiming the White House in November.

Pete Seat, an Indiana GOP consultant whose firm was recently retained by the Kasich campaign, said he would be “shocked” if there were more than a handful of Trump supporters in Indiana’s delegation.

“Donald Trump doesn’t represent what I want my party to represent,” said Tom John, chairman of the Indiana GOP’s 7th Congressional District organization. John is running to be a statewide delegate when the party meets next Wednesday to select a separate set of 27 “at-large” delegates. John said the three delegates from his district are also unlikely to favor Trump.

Dunn, from the 4th District, is technically a delegate candidate, but he’s already guaranteed a slot in Cleveland. He’s the GOP’s district chairman and one of only three applicants for its three seats. All delegate applicants around the state were due to file paperwork by March 15, a deadline that several Indiana GOP insiders said went unnoticed in a handful of districts. But it’s the post-application process that explains why Trump is virtually guaranteed to lose delegate battles.

Local GOP district leaders have picked slates of favored candidates from among the applicants that will be considered at Saturday’s caucuses — tiny meetings of county leaders that typically ratify the names with which they’re presented. Applicants must promise to furnish $2,000 to participate after they’re selected, a requirement that tilts the process away from newcomers and outsiders. Among the delegate applicants who made it on to recommended slates: several district GOP leaders, State Treasurer Kelly Mitchell, Secretary of State Connie Lawson, Congresswoman Susan Brooks, Carmel, Indiana, Mayor James Brainard and Portage, Indiana, Mayor James Snyder.

“One of my criteria for filtering out folks was whether or not they support Donald Trump,” said one district GOP leader. “I didn’t care whether they supported Ted Cruz or John Kasich.”

Several delegate candidates said they’re even likely to support an effort to draft their former governor, Mitch Daniels, as an alternative candidate before giving Trump a look.

“I am supporting the Draft Mitch Daniels for President at the convention,” said Nick Barbknecht, a candidate for alternate from the state’s 2nd District, who is also the district GOP vice chairman. Dunn and John agreed that they’d support a Daniels candidacy if it emerged.

Trump’s Indiana chairman, Rex Early, a former state party chairman who just signed on to Trump’s team last weekend, said he hasn’t explored the delegate process enough to see how it will unfold. He said he intends to pursue a slot as an at-large delegate next week, and other GOP leaders said he’s an example of a self-identified Trump backer who could make it through the process, given his stature within the state party.

Informed of the local district’s anti-Trump lean, Early described it as “news to me.”

“I’m sure Trump’s going to have some delegates out there,” he said, adding that he hasn’t spoken to Trump’s district backers to see if they have the pulse of the delegate process. “We’re going to do something, but the Trump people are supposedly coming in this weekend. We’ll have a sit-down and see where we are, they can fill me in on what they’ve done.”

Barbknecht said that like Early, there are sure to be a few other Trump backers that squeak through the process because they're the rare breed that are also longtime party insiders.

"There’s a couple Trump delegates here and there just by virtue of they're powerful donors or powerful elected officials who happen to be Trump supporters — and no one would otherwise preclude them from being delegates," he said.

Reached by POLITICO, Hammond, the Indiana national committeeman, hesitated to repeat his previous criticism of the New York mogul. He agreed that Trump may struggle to win support among Indiana’s delegates, but he said that sentiment will change rapidly if it looks like Trump can win in November — or if he’s able to personally persuade delegates.

“Donald Trump would likely have a steep hill to climb in persuading delegates to him, depending on who’s selected between now and next Wednesday,” said Hammond. “It doesn’t mean people aren’t persuadable. The most important factor for any delegate would be, is this a person who can win back the White House.”

He added, that there’s a strong emphasis on conducting a “fair” delegate selection process for all three campaigns. “Hoosier Republicans are going to aim to be fair and they will,” he said.

One potential bastion of Trump support is in the state’s 1st Congressional District, where local party leaders say the mogul has shown more strength than in the rest of the state. There, the district GOP Chairman Chuck Williams declined to name the three delegates on the caucus slate but said one was an avowed Trump supporter and he’s not sure of the allegiance of the other two. The district saw 30 applicants for delegate slots, which he said were about evenly split between Trump and Cruz, with a couple stray applicants for Kasich.

“Donald Trump has his share of support in our district,” he said.

But Williams, who’s running to be an alternate, added that he, too, is on a mission to draft Daniels at the convention.

“We need to start it nationally,” he said.

Mark Wynn, chairman of the 6th Congressional District GOP, said his district received a flurry of last-minute delegate applications before the March 15 deadline, an apparent effort by Trump allies to insert supporters in the delegation. But Wynn said he hadn’t checked with any delegate aspirants about their leanings in the primary and that the district’s slate, like all the others, would consistof longtime party hands.

Wynn joins several district chairmen in remaining publicly neutral among the three candidates. The 5th District's Kyle Hupfer and the 8th District's C. Rick Martin are also on their local delegate slates and declined to rule out any of the three candidates.

John, the 7th District chairman, said pro-Trump forces attempted to mobilize grass-roots delegate candidates with an email blast encouraging supporters to run. Though he said it resulted in a “handful of people who were sort of unknown to the local party” filing papers, John said none were added to the party’s slate. Instead, the local party recommended district Vice Chair Jennifer Ping, Indianapolis businessman and state Senate candidate Jefferson Shreve, and 34-year state Sen. Pat Miller.

Contacted by POLITICO, a terse Miller agreed that she was not in the Trump camp and had an abrupt response when asked who she’d back instead.

“I’m supporting Tom Selleck,” she said and quickly hung up.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/donald-trump-indiana-primary-221747#ixzz45QqqpScq
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Glass
10th April 2016, 08:22 AM
EE_ thats a nudge piece designed to get that exact reaction.
If you have a look through it, it's all about how its a waste of time even voting for him in the first case because he'll have to go to a contested convention and he can't win because we got Mr X, Ms Y and so on.

So one guy invokes voting for Satan and the another for Tom Selleck. Then they say the people registered for Trump are nobodies. Probably not true but a good way to minimize them. It's 2 pages of BS IMO.