Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump lashed out at what he called the party’s “rigged” delegate selection rules on Monday after rival Ted Cruz swept all of Colorado’s 34 delegates over the weekend.
The New York billionaire said the process of selecting national convention delegates, which varies state by state, was set up to protect party insiders and shut out insurgent candidates.
“The system is rigged, it’s crooked,” Trump said on ‘Fox News’ on Monday, alleging the Colorado convention results showed voters were being denied a voice in the process.
“There was no voting. I didn’t go out there to make a speech or anything, there’s no voting,” Trump said. “The people out there are going crazy, in the Denver area and Colorado itself, and they’re going absolutely crazy because they weren’t given a vote. This was given by politicians – it’s a crooked deal.”
Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, has outmanoeuvred Trump in Colorado and several other states in recent weeks in the battle for the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination on the first ballot and avoid a messy floor fight at the convention.
Trump has 743 bound delegates and Cruz has 545, according to an Associated Press count. But both are at risk of not acquiring enough delegates for a first-ballot victory, leaving many free to switch their votes on later ballots, reports Reuters.
That possibility has created new scrutiny of the rules for choosing convention delegates, which vary state by state, and on the process of picking the individuals who will serve.
Trump, who has brought in veteran strategist Paul Manafort to lead his delegate-acquisition efforts, complained about Cruz’s recent success at local and state party meetings where activists select the actual delegates who will attend the national convention in July.
On Sunday, Manafort said the Cruz campaign was using “Gestapo tactics” to win over delegates. Trump on Monday accused Cruz of trying to steal delegates in South Carolina, where Trump won the state primary in February.
