Texas: Republican battle ramps up for coveted national delegate spots | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Brian Bledsoe still wants to go to the Republican National Convention this summer even though his personal presidential pick — Ted Cruz — is no longer in the race for the White House.

The 35-year-old Grapevine man said this is his opportunity to fight for conservative principles at the highest possible level.

“As a Cruz supporter, it is disappointing, but I’ve been thinking of going even before Cruz announced,” said Bledsoe, a first-time delegate to the Republican Party of Texas state convention this week in Dallas. “I definitely still want to go … just the excitement of it has dampened.”

Bledsoe, who has set up a GoFundMe page to help raise money for the trip, is one of countless Texas Republicans hoping to be chosen as delegates to the 2016 national GOP convention.

More than 10,000 Republicans will gather in Dallas this week for their every-other-year state convention — the largest political gathering in the country — where they will approve party rules and a platform, elect a chairman for the state party and pick delegates to the national convention.

Bledsoe may have an easier time of being chosen for the convention in Cleveland this July now that Donald Trump is the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and a number of staunch Cruz supporters are backing off their quests to be national delegates.

But he and others say this convention is a moment in history they don’t want to miss.

“It’s going to be a part of history that I want to become part of,” said Marie Howard, a state delegate from Keller who also hopes to be chosen as a national delegate. “There’s history around every convention.

“This may be my one and only opportunity to go.”

Suspended campaign

The battle to become one of Texas’ 155 delegates to the national Republican convention is never easy.

But this year, demand surged early as grassroots Texans saw an opportunity to support one of their own, hoping they could help Cruz gain the presidential nomination during a contested national convention.

At one point, even Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz of Carrollton, planned to seek one of the coveted delegate spots to go support his son.

“There’s definitely a groundswell of people wanting to run, wanting to be delegates for Ted Cruz,” state Sen. Konni Burton, R-Colleyville, said before Cruz suspended his presidential campaign after the Indiana primary.

After Cruz ended his presidential bid, Burton, a longtime supporter of Cruz, said she was among those no longer seeking to become a national delegate.

“Sen. Cruz asked me to run to be a delegate for him in the event of a contested convention,” she said. “Now that he’s out of the race, I will bow out to make way for other grassroots conservatives to participate in the process.”

Cruz’s father likely joins Burton and others no longer in the delegate race.

But the 2016 Republican National Convention isn’t just losing some potential delegates, it’s losing some high-profile potential attendees.

Former GOP presidential nominee John McCain said he’ll stay home to focus on a tough re-election bid. Former GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush indicated he will skip the event, as have his father and brother — former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Even former U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, when asked by the Star-Telegram if she would be at the national convention, responded “Oh, heavens no.”

Fewer people going and fewer people seeking delegate spots is good news for Trump supporters such as Pat Carlson, a former Tarrant County Republican Party chairwoman and state delegate from Fort Worth.

“I think there won’t be as much of a push by the Cruz people to become delegates now,” said Carlson, who plans to run as an at-large delegate. “So I think it will be much easier to try to go now.”

Cruz, as the junior senator of Texas, is expected to speak at the Republican Party of Texas’ convention, which runs Thursday through Saturday at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas.

New rules?

Steve Hollern believes it’s time for new ground rules for national delegates.

Hollern, a state delegate and former Tarrant County Republican Party chairman, would like to see only grassroots Republicans, not elected officials, claim the delegate positions allocated to each of Texas’ congressional districts.

Not only that, but he’d like to see only first-time delegates head to Cleveland.

And in case any fights for the nomination or other issues break out, he hopes the delegates would be “people of strong principle that have backbones of steel and are not subject to intimidation, promises, threats or bribes.”

“This is not a typical year,” said Hollern, who served as a national delegate in 1992 and is not trying to become a national delegate this year.

Many had hoped for a contested convention and planned to try to put as many Cruz supporters as possible in Texas’ national delegate spots.

“A lot of people are throwing their hats in the ring for this,” said Tim O’Hare, a state delegate from Southlake and Tarrant County Republican Party chairman-elect who will take office June 13.

Following the process

Beryl Dowd won’t try to serve as a national delegate this year.

The North Richland Hills woman went to the national convention many years ago, back when Richard Nixon was on the ticket.

But she has been receiving emails and phone calls for a while from those who are trying to go.

“People desperately want to go this year,” she said.

Howard, who has served as a state delegate many times but never as a national delegate, is among those.

She’s disappointed Cruz is out of the race, but she still wants to represent Texas and the 26th Congressional District at the national convention.

“I have a lot of interest in how the process works, and I’ve watched and learned the system over the last eight years,” Howard said. “I’d like to actually go and follow the process.”

As for Bledsoe, whose GoFundMe page has raised more than $1,000 of the $3,500 he’s seeking, he has been interested for a couple of years since some Tea Party members told him that more conservatives need to get involved at the delegate level.

He didn’t know if, as a truck driver, he would have the time or money to be a delegate, but he thought he would start this year as a state delegate.

And since it would be tough to save enough money for a trip to the national convention in such a short time, he started the GoFundMe page.

If he is not chosen to be a national delegate to represent the 24th Congressional District, Bledsoe said he will take the money already donated to him and give it in turn to local conservative groups or North Texas conservative delegates who will make the trip to Cleveland.

“I want to go as far as I can with this,” he said. “I’ve always looked at this as an opportunity to serve.”