By Kyle Cheney
When Nebraska started the process of picking delegates, Trump’s campaign was nowhere to be found.
Another week gone, another opportunity lost for Donald Trump to pick up Republican National Convention delegates.
Nebraska is tailor-made for Ted Cruz, and when the state holds its winner-take-all primary on May 10, party leaders say Trump is an all-but certain loser.
Facing those dim prospects, Trump’s best hope in the state may have been to get a few of his supporters on the list of people who will fill those delegate slots — supporters who, in later rounds of voting at a contested convention, would be inclined to abandon Cruz and help Trump.
But that’s where the billionaire appears to have missed his chance: Party officials say they saw virtually no organization by the mogul’s campaign last week when Republicans in all 93 Nebraska counties held local conventions. Those county conventions picked 800 delegates to May’s Nebraska state convention, where 33 delegates to the national convention in Cleveland will be selected.
Because there was little resistance, many county conventions became Cruz pep rallies, according to interviews with party insiders and convention attendees.
“I didn’t see any Trump supporters,” said John Orr, chairman of the Washington County Republican Party. Party leaders, who attended dozens of the conventions around the state reported similar voids.
It could have been the reverse of a phenomenon that has plagued Trump for weeks. Cruz allies have repeatedly parachuted into states where Trump won primaries — South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee — and helped turn the mogul’s edge into a likely delegate deficit. That could put Trump at a steep disadvantage should he fail to acquire the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination without a contested convention in July.
In Nebraska, where Trump had a chance to return the favor, he didn’t.
Party leaders, who attended dozens of the conventions around the state reported minimal evidence that Trump had put any emphasis on the delegate process in the state. Cruz easily won a handful of straw polls held by convention attendees. The Texas senator’s allies set up tables handing out campaign paraphernalia and literature.
“It appears to me more likely than not that we won’t have a lot of Trump delegates who are faithful to the candidate,” said J.L. Spray, chairman of the Nebraska Republican Party. “I think the opposite is true of Ted Cruz. He will end up appealing to a number of delegates in our national delegation.”
Among Cruz’s strongest showings was Sarpy County, where he easily defeated Trump and Kasich in a straw poll of a few dozen party regulars that will attend the state convention.
“The only person there that had any kind of organization thee was Cruz. No one showed up with Trump,” said Tim Gay, a lobbyist and former state lawmaker who attended the county convention.
There’s a reason. Cruz is widely expected to carry the state in its May 10 primary – it’s shaping up to be his best state on the primary calendar over the next month. Its eastern region shares media markets with conservative western Iowa, where Cruz surged to an upset win in February. Cruz has moved some of his Iowa staff into Nebraska as well. Early primary voting in the state began last week, and as of Monday, 2,058 ballots had been submitted of the 30,000 requested.
The state’s political class is also heavily stacked against Trump. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts has been neutral in the race, but the Ricketts family – prominent GOP megadonors – has become the face of anti-Trump sentiment. Freshman Sen. Ben Sasse, too, has become the most openly anti-Trump Republican in Congress. (He declined to comment for this story). And Nebraska GOP stalwart Kay Orr, the first Republican woman ever elected governor in the country, broke sharply from Trump last month.
It doesn’t hurt Cruz that he joined with Sarah Palin to campaign for Sasse’s election in Nebraska two years ago.
Yet there have been no recent public polls of the state, leaving its broader electorate a mystery. And even Republican Party insiders say Trump may find hard-to-detect pockets of support in the state’s 3rd Congressional District, one of the most sprawling in the country. Though populous Douglas and Sarpy Counties – which include the city of Omaha and its environs – dominate the political conversation, it’s the 3rd distrct where most of the state’s registered Republican voters hail from, and they’re divided amongst dozens of communities with a few thousand people each.
One of them is Norman Nielsen, former chairman of the GOP in Holt County, home to about 11,000 people. Nielsen said he’s hopeful to make it to the national convention as a Trump supporter and he’ll get his chance at the state convention. Just 38 people showed up to the Holt County convention last week, he said, and presidential politics was barely discussed. Though he says he’s seen reports suggesting Cruz is likely to win the state, most of his friends and associates are Trump backers.
“We’re definitely two different sets of attitudes in Nebraska,” he said.
Nearby Logan County saw 46 attendees, and they were about evenly divided between Trump and Cruz, according to one GOP source.
Craig Sefranek, chairman of the 3rd District Republican Party, said Cruz may struggle more than expected in the state’s primary. He supports eliminating ethanol subsidies, which dogged him in Iowa despite his win there, and the issue that doesn’t play well in the Cornhusker State either. In addition, he said he’s heard frustration with political leaders that have come out forcefully against Trump, especially Sasse, who said he’d back a third-party candidate if Trump is the GOP nominee.
“A lot of people have said they look at him different and lost respect for him and doesn’t see the big picture,” Sefranek said. “Obviously, 3rd party gave us Ross Perot, which gave us Bill Clinton. They’re not going to let a third party give us Hillary.”
Sefranek said his own area, Custer County, seemed stacked toward Trump. But he expects that the delegate process will lean toward Cruz because Trump’s backers are political newcomers without experience in the process. Sefranek himself intends to pursue a national delegate slot but he’s not sure which candidate he would back on a third ballot. He said he’s hopeful that the state delegation votes proportionally according to the primary results if given the opportunity to vote freely.
“I’d be pretty upset if third ballot comes and they don’t give one ballot to Trump,” he said.
Nebraska GOP consultant Phil Young said the delegate fight in the state, like most others around the country, lends itself to dominance by “party regulars.”
“I don’t believe that Trump has much of a ground game, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have anybody,” Young said.
Trump’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment on its Nebraska operation. But there’s a reason Nebraska may be lower value for him: its delegates to the national convention are required to vote for the statewide winner on the first two ballots, meaning they’re not freed to support a different candidate unless the nomination requires at least three votes.
Young said there’s a deep vein of anti-establishment sentiment in Nebraska that has helped propel outsider candidates through primaries there before – and there’s even been localized backlashes again the political leaders that have condemned Trump. But that’s not likely to influence delegate selection, he added.
“I think most of the people who are probably going to run for delegate are not going to be your type of people who are too anti-establishment. I don’t think they’re going to go off on a crazy tangent,” he said.
John Orr, the Washington County GOP leader, said many political newcomers around the state have come out for Trump in “knee-jerk” fashion, but they’re not getting involved in the party apparatus.
“They’re not showing up, at least, at the meetings, at the events,” he said. “We just last week had a county convention … I didn’t see any Trump supporters.” Orr added that about 100 people attended.
In suburban Sarpy County, where several hundred Republican activists attended, Gay said he’s still considering whether to make a run at a national delegate slot. Spray, the party chairman, who is an automatic delegate to the national convention said he suspects Cruz will carry the delegation.
“It’s a combination of the effort that I’ve seen and that I anticipate form the Cruz campaign, but it’s also conversations with delegates and individuals I know will be delegates to the state convention,” he said.
