Thread: Donald Trump Secures Vast Majority of Unbound Delegates in Pennsylvania

Donald Trump Secures Vast Majority of Unbound Delegates in Pennsylvania

By Jordyn Phelps
RYAN STRUYK
Apr 27, 2016, 9:09 AM ET

Donald Trump has won a vast majority of the unbound delegate count in the state of Pennsylvania, according to an ABC News analysis. Of the 54 available free-agent delegates in the state, 39 of them told ABC News they will support Trump on the first ballot of the Republican convention.

Twenty-three said they will support the Republican front-runner, while 16 additional delegates -- who said they would vote for the winner of their congressional district on the first ballot -- will also back Trump.

Only two delegates said they plan to vote for Cruz on the first ballot. Seven others ran as uncommitted.

While Trump won a resounding victory in Pennsylvania's popular vote Tuesday night, it was not assured that he would walk away with all of the state's 71 delegate votes because of the state's unusual delegation selection process.

Only 17 of the state's delegates are bound to vote for Trump on the first ballot, while voters directly elected the other 54 — three from each of the state's 18 congressional districts – to act as free agents at the convention.

Trump argued on Tuesday night that delegates have a "moral obligation" to support him on the first ballot as the winner of the state's popular vote.

"There's a moral obligation, at least on the first round, to support the person that won," Trump said in a victory speech on Tuesday night. "Now, we didn't only win, we won big."

But some outstanding delegates aren’t so sure.

Aaron Cohen, a delegate elected in the Pennsylvania's 2nd district, ran as uncommitted and has yet to declare who he will support, but told ABC News Tuesday night he will "probably…not support Trump."

While results were still coming at the time of Cohen's interview, he said he'd "have to evaluate" what he'd do at the convention if Trump is the resounding winner of both his district and the statewide vote.

But James Klein, who was elected in the 5th district and ran as a Trump supporter, told ABC News Monday that he is "wall-to-wall Trump."

"It's time for the party to begin to see the reality here and bring itself together," Klein said.

Wayne Buckwalter, a 6th district delegate who plans to vote for Trump on the first ballot, told ABC that he expected a Trump blowout.

"The suicide pact with Cruz and Kasich sabotaged themselves," he said. "That proved that the system is rigged against Trump."

Pennsylvania represents the largest potential delegate haul of the 136 total unbound delegates who will be free to vote for whomever they choose on the first ballot, likely holding the power the tip the scales in a tight convention.

ABC News' Jim Hill, Lauren Pearle, Jessica Puckett, John Kruzel, and Alana Abramson contributed to this report.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donal...ry?id=38695683

Thank you Pennsylvania delegates!

STAY TRUE! STAY TRUMP!!

judy
the bad part about it he was fine 5 00.00 dollar for going over the bridge I don't know why they did not go on right on 315 right to the mohegan Sun arena 10.000 in dside & 6.000 out side car all over the town .i could not get in . he won it the best day
good luck trump

Trump says the fix is in for Cruz


04-11-2016

In Pennsylvania, Unbound Delegates Remain Wary of Donald Trump

By JEREMY W. PETERS APRIL 27, 2016



A polling station in Philadelphia on Tuesday. Donald J. Trump won Pennsylvania’s Republican primary with nearly 57 percent of the vote.
CreditMark Makela for The New York Times

PHILADELPHIA — Mary Ann Meloy, one of the 54 Republican delegates elected in Pennsylvania on Tuesday as free agents to the Republican National Convention, said she would find it very hard to vote for Donald J. Trump.

Ms. Meloy had a sister with cerebral palsy. And Mr. Trump’s disparaging treatment of people with disabilities, she said, “made me want to jump through the television screen.”

Because of the unusual latitude the Pennsylvania Republican Party gives to the delegates like Ms. Meloy who are not required to support any candidate, Mr. Trump’s crushing victory in the state on Tuesday is more complicated than it may appear.

“The bottom line is that being an uncommitted delegate gives you the ability to take all the facts into consideration,” said Ms. Meloy, who lives in Harmar Township outside Pittsburgh and got her start in politics volunteering for Richard M. Nixon in 1968. “Certainly the will of the people in your district — there’s a lot to be said for that.”

But, she continued: “We have a representative form of government. Not a democracy. A representative democracy.”

Photo

Lynne Ryan, of New Castle, Pa., is a newly elected Trump delegate. “How do you justify not voting for him at the convention?” she asked. “What rationale could people possibly have?”CreditDustin Franz for The New York Times

Mr. Trump won Pennsylvania with nearly 57 percent of the vote. He carried every county, including Ms. Meloy’s, and even won large urban ones with diverse and highly educated populations like Philadelphia, the kind of territory that he has often found inhospitable to his rancorous brand of politics.

Yet in the trench warfare fight for the Republican presidential nomination — the smaller, less understood delegate races that could prove far more pivotal to Mr. Trump’s campaign — the situation remains fluid.

He appeared to have won about 40 of Pennsylvania’s 54 unbound delegates, along with another 17 awarded to him outright as the statewide winner. The remaining 14 delegates have either expressed no preference or said they would not vote for Mr. Trump.

Should Mr. Trump fall short of receiving a majority of the delegates he needs to secure the nomination before the convention — an outcome that seems less likely after Tuesday but still looms as a possible spoiler — a small number of unbound delegates could make all the difference.

From a former congressman turned lobbyist in Erie to a gastroenterologist in Philadelphia, the uncommitted, unbound delegates chosen in Pennsylvania’s 18 congressional districts to represent the state at the national convention in July were examples of just how unpredictable and counterintuitive the nominating process can be.

Graphic: Why Trump Is Calling the G.O.P. Delegate System Rigged

Completely untethered from the public opinion, the delegates who are unbound under state party rules could find themselves grappling with a number of concerns in a contested convention, both political and personal, many of which have nothing to do with the preferences of the voters who elected them.

Together, Pennsylvania’s 54 unbound delegates will form the largest group of free agents when Republicans meet in Cleveland in July.

And if the vote is close, the nominee could rise or fall on the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s experiment with political free will.

Many newly elected Trump delegates find this maddening. “How do you justify not voting for him at the convention? What rationale could people possibly have?” asked Lynne Ryan, who lives in New Castle, in the state’s northwest corner along the Ohio border. “But people will find a reason. Trust me.”

Ms. Ryan, a topsoil farmer and flight attendant, campaigned as a committed Trump supporter.

But at least one of the other delegates elected from her area, Phil English, a former congressman, has been wary of Mr. Trump.

In few states are the quirks of the American party system as evident as in Pennsylvania, which delivered only 17 of its 71 delegates outright to the winner of its primary, Mr. Trump. The remaining 54 delegates were elected blindly by voters in each of the state’s 18 congressional districts.



Graphic: How Votes For Trump Could Become Delegates for Someone Else

The only way voters knew if they were voting for a delegate who supported their favored presidential candidate was if they went to the trouble of educating themselves. That information was not printed on the ballot. And in some cases it was not knowable at all, because many delegate candidates ran saying they would not commit to any candidate now.

“The campaign is fluid,” said Bob Bozzuto, executive director of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, recounting his conversations with delegate candidates recently who have said they wanted to leave themselves some flexibility.

“We talk to some who have been recruited by a campaign and say ‘I’m going to vote for the candidate I’m signed up to vote for,’” he said.

“You have some others,” he added, “who say, ‘the time between April 26 and July 18 might cause me to have some conversations, and I’ll see what happens.’”

Determining how many Pennsylvania delegates are solidly for Mr. Trump, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas or Gov. John Kasich of Ohio is complicated, given that personal preferences can shift so quickly. The New York Times interviewed delegates, analyzed lists of the campaigns’ preferred delegate candidates and relied on media reports to arrive at its totals.

But Mr. Trump hopes to prevail on the unbound delegates by sheer force. He has been making an impassioned case that he deserves the nomination because he has a wide leads in the popular vote, and should not be denied the nomination if he falls just short of a majority at the convention. His underperformance in some states to Mr. Cruz has left him short of that majority, and on Tuesday, the Texas senator appeared to pick up only a few delegates in Pennsylvania. The Times’s analysis counted only three.



Graphic: How the Rest of the Delegate Race Could Unfold

By framing his possible loss as a denial of popular will and a power grab by the establishment, Mr. Trump has frustrated efforts by Republicans who have tried to hold him back and push the convention into multiple rounds of balloting, an outcome that could very well result in the nomination of someone more palatable to party loyalists.

But the overwhelming margin of Mr. Trump’s win in Pennsylvania shows that delegates buck the results at their own peril. Some were slowly coming to this realization.

“I want to do the right thing,” said Mr. English, a former congressman who was elected as a delegate on Tuesday representing the northwestern corner of the state. He said he has reservations about Mr. Trump’s ability to unite the party and wants to spend more time thinking about his decision. But he said he ultimately could not foreclose voting for Mr. Trump given how well he did in his district. “The expectation had been that Trump would be staying below 50 percent. That clearly is not the dynamic that’s out there,” he said, adding, “That’s loomed very large in my thought process.”

In Pennsylvania, long relegated to the role of political footnote in the nominating process because it holds its primary so late in the cycle, a victory has not been important to Republicans since 1980, when George Bush’s victory in the state revived his campaign against Ronald Reagan.

But this year Pennsylvania Republicans could find themselves the center of a contested convention, much as they were in 1976 when Mr. Reagan made an 11th-hour bid to overcome President Gerald R. Ford by naming Richard Schweiker, a Pennsylvania senator, as his running mate. The move did not, however, impress Pennsylvania delegates, or many other delegates for that matter. Mr. Reagan lost on the first ballot.

“These delegates are all trying to dance,” said Representative Charlie Dent, a Republican who represents the Lehigh Valley. “On the one hand they say they want to support the district. But they all have their own preferences. And they will come under tremendous pressure from all the candidates. And not just the candidates but party leaders and elected officials.”

Seth Kaufer, a Philadelphia gastroenterologist elected as a delegate on Tuesday, said he has already met personally with Mr. Cruz and Carly Fiorina, who has been working on the Texas senator’s delegate outreach team. He also met Mr. Kasich. The one candidate he has not met is Mr. Trump. For now, Mr. Kaufer said, he is waiting to decide which one to support at the convention in Cleveland.

Hearing from Mr. Trump’s team — or their highly motivated supporters — now seems all but certain, whether Mr. Kaufer welcomes it or not.

Mr. Trump carried Philadelphia County with almost 60 percent of the vote.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/us...ald-trump.html