The ultimate result of this year’s presidential election could yet rest on the likes of Erling “Curly” Haugland, 69, a businessman from Bismarck, North Dakota, who will be one of the 2,472 delegates at the Republican party convention in July. And he is not saying what he will do.
“I wouldn’t know until the day of the first ballot [at the convention in Cleveland, Ohio] because a lot can happen between now and then,” he said.
With the Republican party in uproar over Donald Trump’s runaway lead, the convention delegates could be crucial in deciding who faces Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee.
Many Republican grandees believe the billionaire property mogul would be doomed to defeat at the hands of Clinton. A few even fear Trump could be a “plant” by Democrats, given his past liberal positions, his seven financial donations to Clinton campaigns and Hillary’s attendance with husband Bill at Trump’s third wedding in 2005.
In vehemently denouncing Trump last week, Mitt Romney, the defeated 2012 Republican nominee, sketched out a “contested convention” scenario whereby the frontrunner’s three remaining rivals stayed in the race to deny him the chance of getting the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination.
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“I would vote for Marco Rubio in Florida, for John Kasich in Ohio, and for Ted Cruz or whichever one of the other two contenders has the best chance of beating Mr Trump in a given state,” Romney said.
Last week’s Super Tuesday contests pushed Trump’s toll to 329 delegates — against 231 for the Texas senator Cruz, 110 for the Florida senator Rubio and 25 for Kasich, the governor of Ohio.
He was expected to pick up dozens more in contests being held yesterday in Kansas, Louisiana, Kentucky and Maine, where 155 delegates were at stake.
On March 15 the race reaches a critical stage as delegates are allocated on a “winner takes all” basis in states such as Florida and Ohio. Kasich is well positioned to win his state, while Rubio trails in opinion polls in his. If both can overhaul Trump that day, then a contested convention becomes a real prospect.
Haugland is one of just 112 “unbound” Republican delegates from a handful of states that hold no primaries or caucuses. This allows them to swing behind other candidates even if Trump is in the lead when he arrives in Cleveland. If no candidate has 1,237 votes after a first ballot, the vast majority of other delegates are also “freed” to vote for whomever they want.
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Benjamin Ginsberg, a veteran Republican campaign lawyer, said a contested convention remained “a real long shot” but was “more possible than at any time in the modern era”.
Russ Schriefer, a Republican consultant, said such chicanery could lead to civil unrest, as there was during the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968 when anti-war protesters clashed with the police. “There will be riots in the streets of Cleveland,” he told The New York Times. “All these Trump people are so whipped up, and then you have the party establishment giving the nomination to the person with the second or third most delegates?”
In the meantime, Florida, where Trump held a rally yesterday, is set to become a key battleground.
Anti-Trump groups have been pouring millions into attack ads portraying him as a conman and charlatan. Their efforts have been given added impetus by Trump’s refusal last weekend to disavow the racist terrorist group the Ku Klux Klan and the notorious white supremacist David Duke.
One Republican party elder said it was wrong to assume Trump could not defeat Clinton, even though his anti-immigrant and sexist comments would be a problem with Hispanic and educated female voters. Trump had been able, he argued, to attract blue-collar Democrats to the Republican cause. “He has managed to expand the Republican party in all sorts of ways we have been trying to do for years and years,” he said.
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“But he’s done it in such an extraordinarily divisive fashion that there’s the existential question of whether it is worth it.”