HOLLYWOOD, Fla.—The messy fight for the Republican presidential nomination is shifting to a luxury seaside resort in south Florida as Donald Trump and chief rival Ted Cruz quietly court party leaders ahead of another set of high-stakes delegate contests.
Cruz conceded publicly for the first time that he doesn’t have enough support to claim the nomination before the party’s summertime national convention, but he also vowed Wednesday to block Trump from collecting the necessary delegates as well. The Texas conservative predicted a contested convention that many party loyalists fear could trigger an all-out Republican civil war.
“What’s clear today is that we are headed to a contested convention,” Cruz told reporters in between private meetings with Republican National Committee members gathered at the Diplomat Resort & Spa for the first day of their three-day annual spring meeting.
Campaigning in Indiana, Trump railed against his party’s leadership, even as his senior lieutenants courted GOP officials behind closed doors in Florida.
“It’s a rigged, crooked system that’s designed so that the bosses can pick whoever they want and that people like me can’t run and can’t defend you against foreign nonsense,” Trump charged at the Indiana State Fairgrounds.
Roughly at the same time, Trump’s newly hired political director, Rick Wiley, was hosting a series of private meetings at the Florida resort with party officials from states set to vote in the coming weeks. The veteran political operative, who previously worked for the RNC, is tasked with helping Trump play catch-up in the complicated state-by-state nomination process.
