Subject: NBC: Trump Campaign Could Lose PA Delegates By Playing To Win
From: "Roberts, Kelly" <[email-masked]>
To: Comm_D <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2016 10:38:45 -0700

Trump camp replaced some grassroots supporters on his PA delegate slate with better-known elected officials. Might be fun to have him asked if he agrees with his campaign's decision to do so

Trump Campaign Could Lose PA Delegates By Playing To Win<http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-campaign-could-lose-pa-delegates-playing-win-n562531>
NBC News - Alexandra Jaffe

John Wells says he would've made a perfect Pennsylvania delegate for Donald Trump - and was recruited months ago by the Trump campaign to do just that, running in the 10th district, along with a handful of others, for a shot at the national convention this July.

But he and other grassroots supporters were left off the Trump campaign's official delegate slate, part of a strategic shift by the campaign that risks backfiring - potentially costing him both delegates and the candidate's carefully-crafted image as the quintessential anti-politician beholden only to the people.

"I think if Donald Trump knew what was going on, he would not permit some of us getting kicked under the bus," Wells said of the Trump campaign leaving the candidate's grassroots supporters off their slate.

Pennsylvania's delegates are unbound to any one candidate and directly elected, on the same ballot as the candidates during the primary, but it's not clear whom they support. The candidates have to campaign themselves to get both their names and their alliances out in the public, and that puts a premium on the campaigns circulating their own slates of preferred delegates, to direct supporters how to vote.

But in Pennsylvania, a slate carefully crafted over months by the strong grassroots network of Trump supporters runs in contrast to the official slate the Trump campaign produced last week. About a fifth of the official slate were candidates not vetted by the grassroots organizers, and many of them were local elected officials or party leaders that may have a better shot at getting elected than Trump's grassroots supporters.

And having both the grassroots and campaign-backed delegate candidates on the same ballot risks the possibility of splitting Trump supporters' votes and delivering Ted Cruz or John Kasich loyal delegates with just a plurality of votes.

That means even in a state where Trump has led most public polls by huge double-digit margins, he could end up winning congressional districts but losing delegates.

"This is Trump country. This is certainly Trump country. But it does concern me about these other lists circulating," said Gabriel Keller, a candidate for delegate in the 12th district and one of the main organizers of the grassroots slate of Trump delegates.

Keller worked for the past two months to vet delegate candidates for the grassroots slate because, he said, the delegate operation in the state was "a mess."

Nearly all of the candidates included on his slate, at DelegatesforTrump.com, are staunch Trump supporters and have committed to backing the candidate on multiple ballots.

In an ironic twist, the possible delegate snafu is the result of the Trump campaign finally starting to play by the rules. The slate the campaign produced this week appears to have left off some grassroots supporters as a strategic move, endorsing better-known names in hopes of backing the most likely winners.

In the 10th district, for instance, where Wells is running to become a delegate, all three of the Trump campaign's endorsed candidates were not included on the grassroots slate. Two, in fact, were also endorsed in a mailer put out by the pro-Kasich super PAC New Day for America, one of whom worked on the George W. Bush campaign.

But all three - a state representative, a state senator and a longtime member of the Republican State Committee - are better-known and better-connected within the party, and likely have a stronger chance at getting elected on Tuesday.

Keller, too, was left off the official Trump slate in the 12th district, which included two candidates not endorsed by his grassroots slate who previously said they would support the winner of the district, but switched to backing Trump over the past week. One, Monica Morrill, was a candidate for Somerset County Commissioner.

"The names that are showing up on this list are politicians," Keller said.

It's enough to turn Wells, the grassroots supporter in Pennsylvania's 10th district, off from the whole process.

He's admired the real estate mogul since the 1970s, when he says he met him a few times in passing on Wall Street, where Wells worked as a trader. When Trump finally launched his campaign last year, Wells called his office every week to offer his time.

Finally, around Christmastime, he got a call back from representatives of the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania: Would he like to run for a delegate position?

"They even helped me get my petitions signed" to run, Wells said, helping him gather over 900 signatures.

But when the official Trump campaign slate of preferred delegates in Pennsylvania came out on Friday, Wells was left off the list. He got an unexpected call from the man now running Trump's Pennsylvania operation, Ted Christiansen, offering him little explanation for the sudden change.

"Personally, I guess my feelings are hurt," he said.

He doesn't believe Trump is personally aware of what's happening in Pennsylvania.

"He would stand up for his grassroots delegates as well if he knew what was going on," Wells insisted.

But if Trump did know, Wells said he was certain the candidate would shut the practice down, because it could end up undermining his message - as the anti-politician, only fighting for the voters - if it continues.

"We swore our allegiance to you and now all of a sudden you're sticking politicians in here?" he asked, incredulously.

Wells speculated that if the practice continued in future states, "you might have other people that really don't care one way or the other towards Donald Trump and they'll say, 'I'm going to Cruz.'"

And indeed, as they've done in other states, the Cruz campaign made moves to take advantage of that potential opening left by the Trump campaign. Wells said within hours of the official slate being released - and his name being absent from it - he received a call from a Cruz representative asking him to come to a meeting with the candidate, one of multiple calls he received from the Cruz campaign this weekend. They reached out to Keller as well.

Wells said he couldn't be swayed. "I'm a Trumpy," he said, through and through. But the whole experience left a bad taste in his mouth.

"The game-plan is to get Donald Trump in the White House," he said. "I'm just a little disappointed in what Trump's staff did to me."