Cruz winning with delegate strategies that could stop Trump

Guy Short will go to his sixth Republican National Convention in July when the party faithful convene in Cleveland for what could be the most competitive such gathering in a long time.

The digital marketing consultant from exurban Denver attended his first convention in 1996 at age 27. Now 47, he's one of 34 delegates that Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas won in a clean sweep of Donald Trump over the weekend in Colorado.

It was his latest rout of the front-runner in a process Cruz has dominated with superior grass roots organizing, attention to detail and a greater popularity with the activist base. Now underway in multiple states, delegate selection is a second battlefront, as the campaigns slog through their final two months of primaries that conclude June 7 with California, New Jersey and three other states.

Winning delegates familiar with the party's rules and convention mechanics could prove especially valuable, if no candidate secures the 1,237 delegates needed for the nomination and there's a contested convention, as appears increasingly likely.

"Cruz delegates won't need on-the-job training in Cleveland," said Matt Strawn, former chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa. "This experience will be invaluable during the inevitable fog of war that surrounds an open convention."

Cruz's ability to outmaneuver the New York billionaire at district and state conventions has fed the narrative that the front-runner doesn't have his act together and isn't as big a winner as he proclaims. It could also embolden anti-Trump forces for other delegate contests even in states where he easily won primaries, such as Massachusetts and South Carolina, and in states yet to cast primary ballots, like Indiana.

Besides his Colorado sweep, delegates backing Cruz also won 11 of 12 convention slots allocated at four congressional district meetings in Iowa over the weekend.

"Having folks who have attended before is important, and I think that will serve Senator Cruz well," Short said. "He's going to need fighters on the floor."

Almost half of those on Cruz's slate of Colorado delegates have attended a national convention before, according to Regina Thomson, a state coordinator for his campaign who was also elected to a national delegate slot.

Having more experienced delegates does carry some risk for Cruz because they have deeper party ties and might be more easily persuaded on subsequent ballots if an establishment candidate is put forward.

Last week, Trump gave a bigger role on his team to political consultant Paul Manafort, a veteran operative who helped manage the 1976 convention floor for then-president Gerald Ford against challenger Ronald Reagan, the last time Republicans entered a convention with no candidate having clinched the nomination. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is in a distant third in the delegate race, has also signed onto his campaign aides who were involved in the 1976 convention.

In an appearance Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" program, Manafort pushed back against the narrative that Cruz is out-organizing Trump at state conventions. He also charged that Cruz's campaign has used "Gestapo tactics" and "scorched-earth tactics" at county and state conventions.

Besides his commanding lead in delegates, Trump is also strongly favored in New York's primary on April 19. Other primaries this month in the Northeast also do not appear to be welcoming ­terrain for Cruz.

But the weekend activity in Colorado exposed embarrassing gaffes on the part of the Trump campaign, including having incorrectly spelled names and wrong candidate numbers on printed materials about the slate of delegate candidates.

Patrick Davis, Trump's Colorado state organizer, didn't even start as a campaign employee until Wednesday. He blamed the printing errors on bad information from the state party.

Asked why Trump's campaign got such a late start on the delegate selection process, Davis responded that "campaigns deal with what's right in front of them" and sometimes fail to look ahead.