The New York billionaire, who has been outmaneuvered by Cruz in a
series of recent state meetings to select national convention delegates,
said the process was set up to protect party insiders and shut out
insurgent candidates.
Donald Trump(Reuters)
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump
lashed out at what he called the party's "rigged" delegate selection
rules on Monday after rival Ted Cruz swept all of Colorado's 34
delegates over the weekend.
The New York
billionaire, who has been outmaneuvered by Cruz in a series of recent
state meetings to select national convention delegates, said the process
was set up to protect party insiders and shut out insurgent candidates.
"The system is rigged, it's crooked," Trump
said on Fox News on Monday, alleging the Colorado convention results
showed voters were being denied a voice in the process.
"There was no voting. I didn't go out there to make a speech or anything, there's no voting," Trump said. "The
people out there are going crazy, in the Denver area and Colorado
itself, and they're going absolutely crazy because they weren't given a
vote. This was given by politicians - it's a crooked deal."
Trump
has 743 bound delegates to 545 for Cruz, according to an Associated
Press count, in the battle for the 1,237 delegates needed to win the
nomination on the first ballot and avoid a messy floor fight at the
Republican National Convention from July 18-21.
But
both are at risk of not acquiring enough delegates for a first-ballot
victory, leaving many free to switch their votes on later ballots.
That
has set off a fierce scramble by Republican candidates to get their
supporters chosen as convention delegates and brought new scrutiny to
the selection rules, which vary by state.
Trump,
who has brought in veteran strategist Paul Manafort to lead his
delegate-gathering efforts, complained about Cruz's recent success at
local and state party meetings where activists pick the actual delegates
who will attend the national convention.
Trump
accused Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, of trying to steal delegates in
South Carolina. Trump won the state primary in February, but Cruz
supporters got four of the first six delegate slots filled at
congressional district meetings on Saturday, according to local media.
Cruz
also succeeded at getting more of his supporters chosen as delegates in
Iowa, where he won the caucuses in January, and at last week's state
convention in North Dakota.
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