FARGO, North Dakota – Appealing to a group of party insiders in a backroom meeting at Fargo’s Ramada Plaza Suites on Saturday night, Dr. Ben Carson argued that unifying behind Trump was best for the Republican Party.
The Trump surrogate made his pitch to dozens of North Dakota’s delegates, many of them the state delegates likely to win the coveted 28 unbound national delegate slots to the Republican National Convention. These delegates could play a pivotal role if front-runner Trump arrives in Cleveland without a majority of delegates: if they support him in the first round, it could be the extra push Trump needs to secure the nomination and avoid a truly contested convention. If they don’t, the likelihood of multiple ballots increases — where more and more delegates are eventually allowed to vote as they please, ballot after ballot, until one candidate wins a majority of the nation’s delegates.
The meetings, held during the North Dakota Republican Party State Convention, were part of an organized effort by the Trump campaign to screen and woo delegates, plying them with Make America Great Again hats, drink tickets and face time with the popular surrogate Carson with the goal of identifying, and on Sunday electing, favorable delegates to the national convention. Trump is expected to face an uphill battle with these party insiders, longtime Republicans who often identify as more conservative than Trump, and his campaign has hired up a team of seasoned strategists to focus on the delegate hunt.
A look inside the closed door meetings Dr. Ben Carson held with North Dakota delegates in support of Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/z0Sp6I1rLQ
— Jane C. Timm (@janestreet) April 3, 2016
MSNBC sat in on one meeting brokered by Rep. Kevin Cramer, who will endorse Trump on Sunday. There, Carson insisted that Trump was the best candidate they could put forward in the general election, and that avoiding a messy, contested convention was best for the party. He defended his endorsement of Trump — the man who famously likened him to a child molester — as a pragmatic decision aimed at securing the White House for the Republicans, adding that rival presidential candidate Ted Cruz is too divisive.
Carson’s meetings seemed to be helping: likely national delegates left impressed.
Walking into another meeting, North Dakota state Sen. Dick Dever said Donald Trump would be his last choice if it weren’t for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Inside, he asked Carson about respectability, and whether Trump would be right for the office.
“He said we’re working on it,” Dever recounted Carson telling him. After it was over, he said he’d warmed just a bit to Trump.
“I think I’m more open minded to it,” he told MSNBC.
Likely national delegates walking out of Carson’s meetings repeatedly said the surrogate was “impressive.”
‘It softened me towards [Trump],” North Dakota district chair and candidate for RNC committeeman Shane Goettle told MSNBC. “I had some reservations about Donald Trump — he seems very unpredictable. I’m trying to get a sense of his core, what makes him tick, and I got to see more.”
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