TRUMP SAYS: “LOOK FOR RIOTS IF I’M NOT NOMINATED ON THE 1st CONVENTION VOTE.”

…Super Tuesday II was a good night for Trump and a better night for Clinton

 

After the first GOP convention Ballot, all hell could break loose.

 

There is the very real possibility that Donald Trump could reach Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena in July with a plurality of pledged delegates, but still short of the 1,237 majority it takes to claim the nomination.

 

If Trump were to arrive with the most delegates and then leave without the nomination, “I think you’d have riots,” Trump said last week on CNN.

 

Noting that “many, many millions of people” have voted for him, Trump added, “if you disenfranchise those people and you say, well I’m sorry but you’re 100 votes short, even though the next one is 500 votes short, I think you would have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen, I really do.”

 

The reality is that this isn’t like playing horseshoes or throwing hand grenades. There are no points at the convention for being “close”.  “You don’t get the nomination if you’re close, you have to get 1,237 delegate votes on the first vote,” said Stephen Duprey, a leader in New Hampshire politics and a member of the Republican National Committee (RNC).

 

The truth is that those state delegations who are required to vote for the one candidate they are pledged to on the first ballot, they could actually turn out to be sleeper cells for another candidate if the voting proceeds.

 

In addition, they are not bound to support the candidate to whom they are pledged on any fights over campaign rules, credentials, the platform or even the vice presidential nominee. These kinds of battles can determine whether the convention will be an orderly nominee coronation, or if it will be a street fight that could even put new names from “out-of-nowhere” in contention for the nomination.

 

An Republican nominating campaign is not a democratic operation and it has already defied all normal expectations.  It could also go even deeper into this uncharted area. The Republican electorate could become further splintered, which would reduce the party’s chances to win in the fall.

 

Therefore, determining the identities and loyalties of individual convention delegates could become the reason for intense delegate scrutiny.

 

The process of selecting the delegates will be crucial, and it will be the subject of verbal combat in nearly every state over the next few months. In this era of the Internet, fortunately there are no longer the smoke-filled backrooms deciding who the GOP nominee will be. 

 

South Carolina GOP Chairman Matt Moore has said he already warned those who may represent the Palmetto State as delegates: “Expect every person in America to have access to your cellphone numbers and email addresses.”

 

Approximately 73% of the delegates are selected without any direct input from the presidential candidates, or selected by a state party executive committees, or at state and local conventions.  Per the GOP campaign lawyer Ben Ginsberg: “The campaigns have to be sure their people and people who are loyal to them are elected as delegates. That is a complicated process and requires on-the-ground organizing.”

 

As an example, let’s take Virginia.  In its March 1 primary, Virginia’s convention delegation cast 17 votes for Trump; 8 for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and 5 for Ohio Gov. John Kasich. It also gave 16 votes for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and 3 for retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, even though they have suspended their campaigns since the primary.

 

Of Virginia’s 49 convention delegates, 33 are chosen at district conventions between now and June 1, and 13 will be picked at the state convention at the end of April. State chairman John Whitbeck and the national committeeman and committeewoman are the remaining three.

 

“This year, it’s like the campaigns are actually taking notice of a normally sleepy and parochial process”, Whitbeck said. “We see the most activity with the Cruz campaign in Virginia, in terms of an organized effort.”

 

“What we are focused on is after we won a state, to go back in and make sure we got delegates to hold their commitment to vote for our campaign. That’s a laborious process, and we are absolutely doing that,” said Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe.

 

Trump is also getting into the program.  The Trump campaign is putting a team in place to track the delegates who have already been designated on state ballots, said senior adviser Ed Brookover, and it will coordinate with its state staffs to monitor the delegate selection.

 

Brookover, is managing the process for the Trump campaign, and he says that the skepticism of its ability to fulfill this process is “wishful thinking on the part of Mr. Trump’s opponents.”

 

Still, the process predates Trump’s candidacy in some cases. All of South Carolina’s 50 delegates, for instance, will be committed to supporting Trump on the first ballot. But to become a national delegate, someone had to have been a delegate to last spring’s state convention, which happened before Trump was even in the race.

 

However, there are states where the candidates do have more of a say in selecting delegates.

 

New Hampshire, for instance, is a very rare state where delegates have already been named.  They were based on slates offered by the candidates themselves. In fact, Trump’s own campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, will be a delegate from the Granite State.

 

If Trump doesn’t make it on the first ballot, we could see either riots, or a final nominee that was way behind Trump in delegates or a nominee that wasn’t in any of the many Republican debates.  A true “Dark Horse Candidate”. 

 

It’s entirely possible.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016