The last time the GOP faced a contested convention was it 1976. Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford were the candidates at the time and it was eerily similar to what’s going on today. The only difference is Ford was a sitting president.
How did they come up with a winner? There was a fight on the floor.As reported by CNN the convention began in Kansas City, the presence of uncommitted and unpredictable delegates meant that nobody could tell which candidate was actually in the lead.
This year’s convention could see similar razor-thin margins between Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz. Former Ford delegate hunter, James Baker, does not think Trump should get the nomination if he is close to 1,237 delegates.
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He said:
That’s a very good political argument for him to make but that’s not actually the way the process is supposed to work. It’s supposed to work in a vote, or a series of votes by the delegates on the floor of the convention. They select the nominee. It is, after all, a party’s nominating convention.
In regards to what the candidates need to be doing now, Baker commented:They need to be ramping up a sophisticated delegate selection process.
It’s a big job. You need to have delegate chairmen. Not just campaign chairmen, but delegate chairman, in each state, sometimes in each district in each state. That’s what we put together when we saw that it was going to be a long, hard, delegate slog to the convention. Some campaigns are really focused on this. They focused on it early — others are late to the party.
Finding and tracking the delegates to vote for your candidate is only half of the battle. Once a delegate committed to supporting Ford, Baker had to make sure they didn’t change their mind.
How do you steal a delegate? You take him out to dinner.You stay in touch with him, you work him, protect him to keep him from being stolen by the other side. And then you got to go over and steal delegates from the other guy.
Baker said:
I bet I went to more state dinners than anyone in the Ford administration with the possible exception of Betty and Gerald Ford because that was a perk that was perfectly legal.
