Donald Trump continued this week to lose ground to Sen. Ted Cruz in the
race for second-ballot delegates, whose votes will matter in a contested
convention. In the latest setback, a caucus in one of the seven congressional
districts in South Carolina picked delegates who are likely to support Cruz if
the national convention goes to multiple ballots.
The process illustrates the complex
system by which delegates are actually chosen in many states, which Trump, a
political novice without a strong national organization, has been denouncing as
rigged against him.
The three Republican delegates from
the state’s fourth district are, like all 50 South Carolina delegates, bound by
state party rules to vote for Trump on the first ballot, based on his win in
the state’s primary in February.
However, if the national convention
isn’t settled on the first ballot, it looks likely that many of the 50
delegates from the Palmetto State would desert Trump, who came in first in the
primary, but with only 33 percent of the vote. The national convention will go
to multiple ballots if Trump does not win at least 1,237 delegates out of the
2,472 available from 50 states, six U.S. territories, and the District of
Columbia. Currently, Trump has 743 delegates to Cruz’s 545 and 143 for Kasich.
Only 12 of the state’s 50 delegates
have been chosen so far, counting the state party chairman, Matt Moore, and the
state’s two members of the Republican National Committee, Glenn McCall and
Cindy Costa, who serve automatically. Over the next few weeks, the remaining
four congressional districts will caucus to choose three delegates each. Then
on May 7, 870 delegates to the state convention will chose an additional 26
national convention delegates.
Of the 12 picked so far, only one —
Jerry Rovner of Georgetown County — is considered likely to keep voting for
Trump beyond the first ballot. State insiders believe the other 11 will desert
the New Yorker once they are no longer bound. And they say that’s likely to be
true for many or most of the delegates yet to be named.
The 870 state delegates were chosen a
year ago at county conventions, which were preceded by county precinct
meetings. A little over 3,000 people participated in the process of picking the
870 state delegates.
“The majority of the people at the
state convention are not Trump people,” said Tony Denny, who is a delegate to
the state convention and has been a national delegate to the last three
conventions.
Denny, who served as rules chairman
of the state party for four years, said that Trump supporters are “trying to
get organized” but added: “I don’t get the sense there’s any big Trump movement
underway.”
On Saturday, Trump lost five of six
delegate slots to Cruz in two other congressional districts — the third and the
seventh — in the Palmetto state. Four other congressional districts — the
first, second, fifth and sixth — have yet to hold their nominating conventions.
Trump won the South Carolina primary
vote on Feb. 20, with 33 percent of the vote, to 22 percent for Sen. Marco
Rubio, 22 percent for Cruz, 8 percent for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, 8
percent for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and 7 percent for retired neurosurgeon Ben
Carson. Combining Trump’s share with the votes for Carson — who has dropped out
and endorsed Trump — only gets to 40 percent; the remaining three-fifths of the
Republican electorate either supported a candidate who is still running, or
whose base doesn’t seem to overlap much with the New Yorker.
And so far, Rovner is the only
delegate openly committed to staying with Trump past the first ballot, though
he added that “if it gets down to the point where we have to unify, I will
unify. I’m not going to be an idiot.”
Rovner expressed outrage that other
delegates would switch their support away from Trump on multiple ballots.
“These people, they’re hypocrites,”
he said, noting that many delegates who are for Cruz or Kasich on a second
ballot often complain to him that their representatives in Congress don’t
listen to their constituents.
Rovner rejected the idea that there
was a conspiracy against Trump, or that delegates were being siphoned away by
corruption. The United States, he said passionately, is “a republic, not a
democracy.” But he added that if Trump doesn’t get all of South Carolina’s 50
delegates to stick with him, then voters who supported Trump will be sent a
message that their vote doesn’t matter.
“The system is not rigged,” he said.
But Rovner said that Democrats who “crossed over” to vote for Trump in the
Republican primary “don’t get represented at all by either party.”
“The only people who can be delegates
are those who work within the system. I feel a higher calling to represent
those people who don’t participate because they’re too busy or choose not to,”
Rovner said.
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