The blistering rise of Donald Trump and the shattering collapse of Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio led mainstream conservatives and other outspoken critics of the billionaire developer to redouble their efforts to prevent his coronation as the GOP nominee.
Anti-Trump Republicans in Georgia and elsewhere are coalescing behind two parallel tracks: One is trying to find a way to deprive Trump from getting the 1,237 delegates he needs to lock down the nomination. And the other is searching for an alternative to run as a third-party candidate in case he does.
Both efforts are playing out this week with roots in Georgia. Atlanta radio show host Erick Erickson joined with two other influential conservatives to organize a closed-door meeting Thursday in pursuit of a “true conservative” who can contest the election.
Erickson, who has a long history of warring with the billionaire, said a Trump candidacy would guarantee a Democrat in the White House and turn Georgia into a swing state.
“If 20 percent of Republicans won’t go vote for Donald Trump, you have to go give them a reason to vote because of your local school board race, your state legislative vote, your U.S. Senate race,” Erickson said on his News 95.5 and AM 750 WSB radio show. “Let’s say half of the people saying they’ll stay home stay home. You’re still screwed if you’re a Republican in down-ballot races.”
Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign is already focused on shadowy efforts to find unbound delegates for Trump who might be willing to leave him at the Republican National Convention. Most of the delegates Trump won in Georgia are required to vote for him on the first ballot, but they’ll be free to spurn him in successive rounds if he fails to lock up the nomination.
In Georgia, that effort begins in earnest on Saturday with grass-roots GOP county meetings across the state. Scott Johnson, a former Cobb County GOP chairman and a grass-roots co-chairman of Cruz's Georgia campaign, said nominating slates are being drawn up this week.
“Everybody is locked into their first vote. Following that, it’s the wild, wild West,” Johnson said. “There’ll be a lot of action that occurs for the subsequent vote.”
Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s supporters have much the same strategy. John Watson, a longtime Georgia Republican operative and a co-chairman of the Ohioan’s campaign here, laid it out in an interview Wednesday.
“It’s really simple. The first ballot, Trump loses. The second ballot, all eyes should be on the national polls,” he said. “And there’s only one candidate who has a clear lead over Hillary Clinton. That’s John Kasich, and that right there is his path to victory.”
Exit polls in Ohio and Florida — two crucial swing states in the November election — showed the depth of Republican misgivings toward Trump. One in three Republican voters in Florida, and more than 40 percent of Ohio Republicans, said they would be willing to consider a third-party candidate if Trump won the nomination.
Yet it could be too late for Trump’s opponents to stop his march to the nomination after he racked up more victories Tuesday, knocking out Rubio with a win in Florida and winning additional victories in Illinois and North Carolina.
Kasich, the establishment’s last candidate standing, has already been mathematically eliminated from contending for the GOP nod. And Cruz, Trump’s strongest remaining rival, has failed to consolidate mainstream Republicans with his anti-establishment campaign.
Trump on Wednesday predicted “riots” at the convention in Cleveland in July if he is blocked from winning the nomination. He told CNN’s “New Day” that there would be a “natural healing process” once he locks up the nomination. But a maneuver to block him, he said, would be an insult to the millions who have voted for him.
“If you disenfranchise those people and you say, well I’m sorry but you’re 100 votes short, even though the next one is 500 votes short, I think you would have problems like you’ve never seen before,” he said. “I think bad things would happen, I really do. I believe that. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”
The campaign now moves to Western states where the immigration debate will play a bigger role. Arizona and Utah hold primaries on Tuesday, and a vote in Wisconsin will follow on April 5.
“Despite Kasich’s Ohio victory, this is really a two-man race with Trump the favorite to either reach 1,237 delegates or come up just short,” said Joshua Azriel, Kennesaw State University’s emerging media director, who is following the race. “Kasich and Cruz need a strategy to run strong in the next three states: Arizona, Utah and Wisconsin over the next two weeks.”
Others are increasingly worried about a permanent fracturing of the Republican Party. Seth Millican, a veteran Republican operative in Georgia who supported Rubio, was frustrated when his candidate bowed out. But, he added, “winning doesn’t make you right and losing doesn’t make you wrong.”
“I will never support Donald Trump,” Millican said. “I don’t care if he sweeps every state from here on out — for him, people are pawns with no inherent worth, politics always precede principle, the ends always justify the means, family matters little, and faith is a laugh.”
The Trump opponents are running out of time: He now has more than half the delegates he needs to secure the GOP nomination.
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