Ted Cruz picks up 12 more delegates as Colorado Republican convention draws near

Texas senator has a majority of delegates in seven states, leaving him one state short of the threshold to have his name placed into nomination under Rule 40

Ted Cruz continued his sweep of delegates in Colorado on Friday, running the table in the four remaining congressional districts holding conventions to send representatives to the RNC in Cleveland.

The Texas senator accumulated 12 more delegates, giving him 21 of the state’s 37 delegates. Thirteen of the remaining 16 will be chosen at Saturday’s state convention, and the remaining three are party officials with automatic positions.

While only 17 of the 21 delegates were formally pledged to Cruz, the remaining four had all run on an official Cruz slate and one was even on Cruz’s statewide leadership team. Cruz now has a majority of delegates in seven states, leaving him one state short of the current threshold to have his name placed into nomination under Rule 40 of the Republican party. While Rule 40 is widely expected to be modified, Cruz will have a major tactical advantage in any rules fight by meeting this threshold. Trump is the other only candidate to have won a majority of the delegates in eight states, and it is almost impossible for John Kasich to do so.

Cruz’s success in the state was built on a strong grassroots operation, and his campaign had been organizing in the Rocky Mountain State since last summer. Senator Cory Gardner, a former Rubio supporter, said that he thought Cruz had the best organization of any of the three remaining candidates.

Alan Cobb, a top operative for Trump, shrugged off the results. The campaign had been pessimistic about its prospects of winning any delegates there.

He said that there was real enthusiasm for his candidate in Colorado but that the state’s unique system of selecting delegates meant that support for Trump would not be reflected in the state’s delegation in Cleveland. He compared it to a winner-take-all state where a candidate can win all the available delegates with a simple plurality.

Trump’s only success in the state’s seven district conventions happened in Colorado’s fourth district, where Cruz only ran an official slate of three candidates, leaving three positions up for grabs. The result was that while the Texas senator easily won all three delegate positions on the ballot there, two of the three available slots for alternates were filled by Trump supporters.

Despite getting shut out on Friday and the grim outlook for Trump at Saturday’s state convention, the real estate mogul still has a clear path to getting the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination with a strong performance in New York’s 19 April Republican primary.