MONTGOMERY, Ala. — After granting the GOP front-runner a landslide victory at its primary in March, Alabama now stands to play a massive role in assuring that Donald Trump receives the Republican Presidential Nomination at the party’s National Convention.
Two of the members on the convention’s Rules Committee are Alabama Republicans pledged as delegates for Trump. State Rep. Ed Henry (R-Hartselle) and Laura Payne were elected on Saturday in Montgomery and will play a huge rule in light of a potentially contested convention. Alabama Republicans also elected Sen. Jeff Sessions, a top Trump adviser, to chair the state’s delegation to the convention.
The committee could change the rules in ways that help or hurt individual candidates. In a recent briefing, RNC officials sounded confident that the rules guiding the 2016 convention would change before it begins. The controversial Rule 40, which governs the presidential nominating process, has been subject to persistent scrutiny and suggestions that it may be rewritten.
Subsection ‘b’ of the rule states that a nominee must demonstrate the support of a majority of delegates from eight or more states. Before the 2012 convention, only five states delegates’ support was required. The rule was put in place by Mitt Romney’s delegates, which many GOP sources have described as a short-sighted attempt to squash Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) supporters.
Both Trump and Cruz have campaigned with the goal of exceeding the eight-state threshold, and altering the rule to accept additional competitors would irrevocably anger Cruz and Trump supporters.
A contested convention is likely at this point because it will be very difficult for Trump to win the 1,237 delegates needed to guarantee his nomination prior to the convention. If no candidate has that number of pledged delegates, it will take more than one ballot to determine the nominee. In this scenario, the implementation of rule 40-or lack thereof- and the rules binding delegates from individual state parties become extremely important.
As for Cruz, Kasich, and potentially others looking for delegates to sweep up in the chaos, Alabama Republican Party Rules make it extremely difficult to grab defectors. Like other states, Alabama GOP delegates must vote at the convention for the candidate they originally pledged to support on the first ballot. If the convention vote goes to a second ballot Alabama’s delegates may switch candidates only if the original candidate specifically releases them, or if two-thirds of the original candidate’s delegates agree.
“The Alabama delegation is bound extremely tight,” said Alabama Republican Party Chairwoman Terry Lathan. “The interesting part is these are the rules that were in place in 2012 and the presidential year before then. There is nothing new here for us, except a microscopic lens of the nation is watching.”
While Trump’s campaign has been incredibly successful at garnering popular votes and unprecedented amounts of media attention, his lack of ground game and attention to party rules could prove detrimental in a very technical party bout.
For example, this past weekend Sen. Ted Cruz won all of Colorado’s 34 delegates in a process that Donald Trump described on Twitter as “unfair!” Colorado’s Republican Party did away with the statewide vote scheduled for March 1st and replaced it with a Hodge-podge system. Some delegates were chosen at the state level; others at the county level.
This decision helped Ted Cruz because he was the only candidate to actually show up in person at the Colorado convention and he had stronger organization at the grassroots level. Trump’s ground game on the other hand was highly unorganized. His supporters passed out fliers advocating for preferred candidates that had misspellings and misrepresentations of the ballot.
Because of Trump’s recent slump and unlikely chance of reaching the 1,237 threshold, Alabama’s rock-solid delegation has become that much more important for the current Republican front-runner.
Donald Trump did exceedingly well in the Alabama presidential primary. The New York Billionaire won over 43 percent of the popular vote and 36 of 50 total delegates.
