The three remaining Republican contenders for president are involved in a battle at the most local levels of GOP party organization to ensure their supporters fill delegate slots at the July convention.
Talk of a contested convention has been floated for months now. If a candidate does not secure the nomination on the first ballot — 1,237 delegates — many of those delegates become unbound and can vote for who they choose on the subsequent rounds of voting.
Donald Trump, Sen. [crscore]Ted Cruz[/crscore] and Gov. John Kasich are now organizing to put their supporters in place. (RELATED: Former Pat Buchanan Adviser Prepares Third Party Vessel For Donald Trump)
Scott Johnson, a Cruz organizer in Georgia, told The Wall Street Journal, “we started preparing to get our folks to the convention in 2015.”
Kasich’s campaign has also been active in preparing to win a contested convention — his only path to the nomination. (RELATED: Kasich Hires New Talent Aimed At Contested Convention)
“We’ll have people at every state convention and at every district convention. It’s going to be hand-to-hand combat,” said Kasich senior strategist John Weaver to the Journal.
The decision process for choosing delegates resides at GOP precinct, county, district and state meetings. This favors long-time Republican activists — a weakness for Trump.
Straw polls of Republicans enrolling for county conventions at precinct and county meetings in Georgia showed 63 percent of them supported Cruz, 13 percent backed Trump. The New York real estate developer won the state by double-digits.
While the Trump campaign is hoping for an outright win at the convention, there are working to get their supporters in place.
An email sent to Georgia supporters by the campaign’s state director said, “Media reports indicate that career politicians and the political class are plotting to deny Mr. Trump the nomination by preventing our supporters from representing Mr. Trump as his delegates at the Republican National Convention.”
A lot of what is preventing Trump supporters from being delegates at the Cleveland convention are existing party rules.
At the Cobb County GOP convention this past Saturday dozens of people were allowed to enter because the chairman of the convention waived rules requiring them to have previously attended precinct and county meetings.
Many of these newcomers were Trump supporters and due to them joining the party process so late it is unknown how many will be able to attend the state convention.
Phoebe Hobbs, a Trump supporter who attended the meeting in Cobb County said, “There’s a reason they are upset [with the political system]. They don’t know how the party is run.”