Sen. Ted Cruz's win-from-behind strategy to cinch the GOP nomination is to block front-runner Donald Trump at a contested convention decided by "thousands of little-known activists,"
The Washington Post reports.
The focus will be trained in particular on California, Indiana and Nebraska, where the Texas lawmaker's campaign believes delegate rules and political tilts are favorable, the Post reports.
According to the Post, Cruz's tightly run and the well-oiled campaign has built up a team dedicated to pursuing the state-by-state process of selecting delegates — assigning each delegate to a dedicated campaign staffer for support.
The Post reports its analysis shows Cruz is poised to pick up as many as 170 delegates on the second ballot at an open GOP convention in July — a number that could effectively
stymie Trump from attaining the necessary 1,237 delegates to win.
So far, the Cruz campaign has been most successful at recruiting "double-agent delegates" bound to Trump, but loyal to Cruz,
The Washington Times reports.
"Cruz basically has people going there saying, 'I'm bound to vote for Trump, but Cruz's machine got me here,'" Republican political strategist Rob Collins tells the Times.
"The Trump campaign has built everything around winning on the first ballot," he adds. "That math is still a better possibility for Trump, but it is getting more and more challenging as the days go by."
Cruz's Virginia co-chair Shak Hill said local supporters recognized last fall there was a chance of a contested convention — and prepared by identifying and then getting Cruz supporters over the hurdles to becoming delegates.
"My prediction is that we will come out with 60 to 70percent voting for Cruz on the second ballot," Hill said.
California, with its 172 delegates, will be key to the strategy, the Post reports.
The Cruz campaign believes it can energize a Republican base, hiring additional paid staffers and rolling out endorsements from local and state officials, the Post reports.
And even in New York, where Cruz is expected to do no better than a distant third in the April 19 primary, his campaign aims to add to the delegate count, running ads in upstate cities and in heavily Democratic congressional districts around New York City, the Post reports.
Between New York and Indiana's contest May 3, the Cruz campaign is focusing on Pennsylvania, which will send most of its delegates to Cleveland unbound to any candidate, the Post reports.
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