Friday, March 25, 2016 08:26 AM
By: Sandy Fitzgerald

Donald Trump says there will be no contested convention in Cleveland this summer, but behind the scenes, he has been assembling operatives to work as a team should a floor fight for the GOP presidential nomination happen.

Barry Bennett, who left Ben Carson's campaign in December and joined forces with Trump, is leading the front-runner's delegate strategy, reports NBC News, and commented that the campaign is already "talking to tons of delegates."

The team's strategy involves converting delegates during the 40 days between the last primary election and the GOP convention, while getting ready to fight for a Trump nomination should he not get the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the bid.

Bennett told NBC the Trump campaign has mapped out two phases for winning the convention. The first would be to lock down unbound delegates, giving the campaign a chance "to put together 50 or 75 delegates to win on the first ballot," he said.

Currently, there are 323 delegates up for grabs for the first ballot, NBC reports, totaling the delegates who backed Marco Rubio and Ben Carson and others from states like Colorado and North Dakota, where delegates are unbound.

Meanwhile, Trump's campaign has gathered a team to map out convention scenarios, including former FEC Commissioner Don McGahn, who serves as Trump's general counsel.

Others on the team, include former Carson aides Jason Osbourne, who has handed floor operations at other conventions and ex-RNC Political Director Ed Brookover, who is said to have deep party ties in Washington.

But if Trump's camp can't secure enough delegates to win the first ballot, the rules allow delegates to switch candidates, and Bennett said that's when heavy negotiations start.

Trump, though, says all challenges to his nomination are unfair, or that he thinks "you'd have riots" if delegates manage to block his nomination, and earlier this week said it is not fair to require a candidate earn 50 percent of delegates when participating in a race where there are more than five candidates.

Bennett told NBC that the campaign's projections show Trump finishing the primaries with 1,450 delegates, almost 200 more than needed to secure the nomination.

http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/trum.../25/id/720832/