PITTSBURGH — A strong showing in Tuesday night’s series of primaries could put GOP front-runner Donald Trump well on his way to clearing the party’s delegate threshold and locking up the Republican presidential nomination.
But while Trump’s polling numbers look solid in Pennsylvania, the state’s delegate structure, on its face, provides an opening for another candidate to pick up more than three times as much support as the winner of the commonwealth’s popular vote.
“‘Bizarre’ is the best word to describe the whole damn process,” says Charlie Kirkwood, a candidate for one of Pennsylvania’s 54 unbound delegate positions. “This is going to shape up to be a battle.”
The winner of Pennsylvania’s Republican primary is guaranteed 17 of the state’s delegates. But the commonwealth’s primary voters on Tuesday also will elect 54 delegates who will be completely unbound once the party’s national convention rolls around in July.
Some have vowed to stick with their respective district’s popular vote. Some have said they’d support the state winner. Some have vowed to back one particular candidate. And some haven’t pledged their allegiance one way or another.
G. Terry Madonna, a public affairs professor and director of the College Poll at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, says more than 160 people have come forward to potentially serve as state delegates. He says dozens have already pledged their support behind either Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz or Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who was born and raised in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania.
But it could be a completely different ballgame at the convention.
“It doesn’t matter what they said. They can do whatever they want,” Madonna says. “It looks like more delegates than not have said that ‘if elected, I will go and vote for the candidate that wins my congressional district.’ And that’s honor-bound.”
Kirkwood, for example, has pledged to support what the voters want, going so far as to set up an online poll that will help guide his decision.
“I have received quite a few emails, both from other delegates and from party leaders and the public, very partisan, saying what a great idea it is to open this up to the people,” says Kirkwood, who has been a Pennsylvania delegate in two prior election cycles. “I believe the only people who should be trusted in an election are the voters. It’s not the polls, it’s not the party officials — it’s the voters.”
But that sentiment likely won’t stop candidates and their supporters from attempting to woo delegates when they travel to Cleveland for the convention later this year. In fact, Madonna says, some forms of bribery could work their way into the fold.
“Imagine the goodies that are going to be bestowed on them getting wooed on all sides,” he says, suggesting campaigns could legally “pay for [delegates’] hotels, travel, fly them on an airplane, give them a cruise.”
Though Trump has said he would not attempt to game the delegate system — calling it “corrupt” — he was quick to point out that he has better “toys” at his disposal than the other two candidates.
“Look, nobody has better toys than I do. I can put [the eventual delegates] in the best planes and bring them to the best resorts anywhere in the world,” he said last week. “Doral, Mar-a Lago. I can put them in the best places in the world.”
Madonna says a Pennsylvania Republican primary hasn’t been this contentious since 1976, when eventual president and former California Gov. Ronald Reagan unsuccessfully challenged President Gerald Ford — who ultimately lost in the general election to Jimmy Carter.
“When they got to the [Republican] convention, there was no majority. And Ford was about 100 delegates short, and he got the votes by wheeling and dealing with the delegates as they arrived,” Madonna says. “But Pennsylvania mattered because they overwhelmingly committed their votes to Ford.”
Complicating matters this year is a sizable voter shift seen by both Madonna and Kirkwood — tens of thousands of registered Democrats have switched their allegiance to the Republican Party. The driving force behind the move, says Madonna, is Trump.
“There isn’t any doubt that a good portion of the switchers were to vote for Trump. And many of them were in counties with a lot of blue-collar workers, where Trump has had a lot of support,” he says. “We don’t know for sure, and we don’t know why, but there’s been enough interviews that I’m fairly convinced the driving force was to vote for Trump.”
Indeed, according to Pennsylvania voter registration data, nearly 92,000 residents this year had changed their political affiliation to Republican, and nearly 62,000 of these people came from the Democratic Party. For comparison’s sake, only about 63,000 Pennsylvanians flipped to become Democrats — and less than 20,000 came from the GOP.
And although Madonna says there are some reports of “sabotage” registration — in which Democrats register as Republicans to vote for the candidate they think would fare the worst against a Democratic candidate in the general election — he says he believes the lion’s share of switchers are genuine in their desires for a Republican nominee like Trump.
“A lot of western Pennsylvania, particularly around Pittsburgh, is old steel towns — a lot of blue-collar workers. I imagine the anti-trade deals and anti-China rhetoric resonates pretty well there,” Madonna says. “These are people who switched in their own minds even before they switched their registration. These are the Reagan Democrats.”
How these individuals will impact Tuesday’s vote — and more broadly shape Pennsylvania’s delegate landscape in the event of a contested convention — remains to be seen. Trump’s rhetoric has repeatedly played to this demographic, and, as such, he is widely expected to walk away with the state’s popular vote on Tuesday.
But thanks to Pennsylvania’s “bizarre” delegate rules, a victory in Tuesday night’s primary battle may not be enough to ultimately win the unbound delegate war.
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GOP Candidates Jockey for Delegates in ‘Bizarre’ Pennsylvania Primary originally appeared on usnews.com
