Trump is working state-by-state to improve chances at the Republican convention

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Donald Trump’s team has launched a nationwide campaign to bolster his chances of winning sympathetic delegates at next year’s nominating convention and identify opportunities to shape party policies that could help his campaign, according to people familiar with the plans.

The behind-the-scenes effort comes at a time when most of Trump’s rivals have yet to launch campaigns and are focused on the most esoteric part of the Republican nominating process — state policies and party leaders who actually choose the delegates who are nominated for the presidency.

His team invited state party officials to Mar-a-Lago, arranged private meetings between state leaders and Trump while he traveled, endorsed officials of the state they believe will support him and have met with top Republican Party officials in Washington to discuss how the delegate selection process will unfold, according to people directly familiar with the efforts, as many for this story spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Trump advisers say the outreach is less about asking for changes now and more about cultivating relationships for the coming months — when they can call for some rule changes in states and try to shape who are the delegates for the convention. It also shows that as they show political strength, there is a realization that they likely face a long and difficult nomination battle and potentially a messy convention, some Trump advisers said.

“The Trump campaign has a political operation that is second to none, and will use its vast experience to ensure complete and total victory in 2024,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said Friday.

Trump, the one-time outsider who pieced together his successful 2016 campaign quickly, has now built a team more adept at playing the inside game. Strategists for multiple rival political operations, which have yet to formally declare their candidacies, say they worry that Trump’s early blocking and front-running could pay big dividends next year and leave them in the race. to catch up.

Unlike the Democratic Party, which largely dictates how delegates are chosen at the national level, state Republican parties have ample opportunity to determine who they send to the convention and how those people are slated to vote in the first ballot State GOP parties have until Oct. 1 to submit their delegate selection plans for 2024.

“You can influence the way delegates are chosen, whether it’s by primary, caucus or convention,” said Henry Barbour, a longtime Republican committeeman from Mississippi. “You can be affected by whether a state party will have a winner-take-all or what criteria a candidate must meet to win any delegates. There are only advantages to being the most organized campaign.”

During the 2016 campaign, Trump saw his candidacy rocked by tactical losses in states like Colorado and Louisiana, where the campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) outperformed Trump at the party caucuses, winning a larger share of convention delegates than his popular support in the state. Trump’s anger at the losses led, in part, to his decision to fire his campaign manager and hire Paul Manafort, a Republican consultant with extensive delegate management experience.

“We are running a campaign for the Republican nomination that was not run in 2016,” said a Trump adviser. “There’s more than just rallies involved in a real campaign.”

For his 2020 re-election campaign, Trump advisers Justin Clark and Bill Stepien worked for more than a year to change party rules to ensure he would not face a challenger at the nominating convention. In Massachusetts, for example, the Trump campaign changed the delegate selection plan to winner-take-all based on primary results to avoid moderate Gov. Bill Weld (R) to seat potential allies at the convention.

In recent weeks, Trump’s staff has taken a similarly aggressive stance, aiming to introduce themselves to the leaders of all the state and territory Republican parties that will convene in Milwaukee on July 15, 2024. .

Those working on the effort include Trump’s top lieutenants: Susie Wiles, Chris LaCivita and Brian Jack, along with Clayton Henson. In 2016, Wiles worked on the convention’s rules committee, while LaCivita was hired to work for the national party to prepare for a contested convention and Jack worked as delegate director for the Trump campaign.

Some of the meetings came at a Republican National Committee meeting last month in California, where Wiles, LaCivita and Henson all traveled to meet with state Republican Party officials. Trump advisers have met with officials in nearly all 50 states, people familiar with the matter said.

Senior Trump advisers in Washington last week met with RNC officials and others about the effort, people familiar with the matter said, and they visited several individual states. Trump also sent a delegation to Michigan last week to support the campaign of state party chair Matthew DePerno, who lost.

“They reached out. There have been conversations,” Carson Jorgensen, Utah’s party chairman, said of Trump’s effort. He said the delegates his state sends to the national convention will be determined in the state’s primary and then chosen. in a private meeting of party activists.

“In [state] convention, we will nominate our delegates, no doubt, but they are bound by how the primary vote comes in,” he said.

Even in states where the delegate allocation process is set, the Trump team believes these early contacts will help ensure that delegates, including party officials, at the convention are supportive. Although primaries and caucuses often bind the nomination votes of delegates on the first ballot, delegates are free to vote their preferences on other matters before the convention, including rules for proceedings and who can get credentials to vote. They also have the power to disrupt proceedings.

Trump campaign officials have compiled the policies of the majority of each state’s Republican Party and have begun reviewing them to look for potential gains, changes and pitfalls, people familiar with the effort said.

In Michigan, Democrats announced a plan to reschedule the state’s primary for February 2024, outside the window allowed by national Republican rules, raising the possibility that some of the state’s Republican delegates can be stripped of credentials if they are allocated by a statewide vote. Trump advisers, during a visit to the state this month, pushed local leaders to consider rule changes for next year that would allow the state to choose next year’s delegates through of a caucus or convention to keep the state’s entire delegation at the national convention, according to multiple people familiar with the talks.

In Idaho, Trump’s allies, who the campaign says is not working in their direction, are looking to maintain his advantage there by giving more influence to members of the central committee, which will discuss rules on electing delegates this summer, according to a party operative with direct knowledge of the discussions. Some of the former president’s allies in the state forced members deemed disloyal to Trump to resign and challenged the legitimacy of at least one state residency committee member in an effort to put a Trump loyalist in the slot. that was before the national convention year.

A Trump campaign adviser said the former president’s campaign was not involved in the battles in Idaho.

The state party is deeply divided among Trump loyalists, libertarians and those allies of more establishment Republican figures like Republican Gov. Brad Little, who was unsuccessfully challenged from the far right in 2022 by former Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin endorsed by Trump. State party chairwoman Dorothy Moon, who echoed Trump’s false claims about election fraud after the 2020 presidential contest and is seen as sympathetic to his candidacy, did not return calls for comment.

While some in the GOP would like to see an open primary in Idaho to give other Republican White House contenders a greater chance to compete, members who support Trump’s effort are focused on making sure the Idaho primary is remains closed to any voters other than Republicans — a rule that favors Trump, the people said.

There is also controversy brewing over an Idaho lawmaker’s proposal to move the state’s presidential primary from March back to May to align with other state primary elections. The date was moved earlier in the presidential calendar in 2012 to encourage more candidates to visit and compete in the state.

Strategists for the two competing presidential contenders said they worry the Trump team will push to narrow the universe of people involved in delegate selection by moving away from primaries and toward caucuses or conventions.

“The man is running for president again, wouldn’t you expect him to be contacting state party officials?” said Morton Blackwell, an RNC member from Virginia who added that he was not personally lobbied. In contrast to Trump’s neglect of a delegated approach in 2016, Blackwell said, “This is a different political situation. Trump is not an outsider now.

Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.

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