Ted Cruz under fire from Maine governor over delegate carve-up
Paul LePage says ‘political hooligans’ of Cruz camp have reneged at last minute on unity deal in brazen bid to sweep all delegate slots at state convention
Ted Cruz’s campaign faced more allegations of dirty tricks after the Maine governor, Paul LePage, took to Facebook to condemn the Texas senator’s campaign as being run by “greedy political hooligans.”
The fiery and controversial governor claimed on Friday that the Trump and Cruz campaigns had previously reached a “unity deal” to elect delegates to the national convention in proportion to results of the Pine Tree state’s 5 March caucuses.
Such an allocation would deliver 12 Cruz delegates, nine for Trump and two for John Kasich, the Ohio governor.
However, LePage, a Trump supporter, said on the eve of Maine’s state convention that the Cruz campaign had reneged on the deal, believing they could fill all 20 elected delegate slots on the ballot. “I can’t stand by and watch as Cruz and the Republican establishment forcibly overrule the votes of Mainers who chose Trump and Kasich,” said LePage.
While delegates are bound on the first ballot according to the results of state primaries and caucuses, they are unbound on subsequent ballots if a contested convention occurs. Such votes would have nothing to do with the results from the states and be solely decided by the individual delegates.
The Guardian can confirm there was discussion of a unity slate in Maine; sources disagree on whether a deal was ever reached.
In his intervention, LePage used strikingly personal language to attack a Cruz campaign operative for “stabb[ing]us in the back”. It marks an escalation in rhetoric even as the campaign seeks to roll back Trump’s aggressive language and his use of the nickname “lyin’ Ted” for Cruz.
Earl Bierman, the state chair for the Cruz campaign, told the Guardian on Thursday night: “There had been a tentative agreement for a unity slate but that was with the understanding that Cruz’s campaign is grassroots.”
Bierman said that he had thought it was a good idea to avoid intra-party strife but grassroots Cruz supporters rebelled at the unity proposal and nixed it. “They just said no, we are not having it, they put forth their own slate,” said Bierman.
Trump has attacked Cruz for months over allegations of dirty tricks on the eve of the Iowa caucuses. The frontrunner has claimed Cruz engaged in “fraud” after the Cruz campaign shared a CNN story only minutes before the Iowa caucuses began that suggested Ben Carson might be dropping out. Instead, Carson later clarified he had been going home to do laundry.
Trump also attacked Cruz for using a mailer to shame potential caucus-goers into voting by showing their turnout record along with neighbors’. Although this tactic is perfectly legal and been backed by political science research, Trump has repeatedly condemned as dishonest.
The resulting controversy is likely to cause major political turmoil in Maine. While Cruz may have the majority of the delegates needed to elect their full slate, LePage is still the state’s sitting governor and has a reputation for retaliatory behavior in state politics.
If the full Cruz slate is elected, LePage, who is running as a Trump delegate, will not be elected to represent the state he governs.
Both campaigns have sent top surrogates to the state, with former presidential candidates Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina appearing on behalf of Trump and Cruz respectively. It represents the next front in the ongoing complex battle to fill delegate slots and prepare for a contested convention.
Bierman said he was confused about why LePage was “crying foul”, noting that in a proxy contest for RNC national committeeman, he himself had lost to state representative Alex Willette, a Trump supporter and close ally of LePage. Based on that result, the Trump campaign should be well placed to elect delegates at the state convention.
Bierman also pushed back at LePage’s attack on the Cruz campaign staffer, whom he described as honorable. He noted the national campaign had no involvement in any discussions on a unity deal. The Cruz campaign is “not telling grassroots in Maine what they can or can’t do”, said Bierman. Instead the grassroots supporters were giving the Cruz campaign marching orders.
So far, Cruz, whose campaign has long focused on delegate hunting has been at a distinct advantage over Trump. The frontrunner has only beefed up his delegate outreach in the past six weeks, bringing over a number of former operatives from the Carson campaign, led by the veteran strategist Ed Brookover as well as thelongtime Republican insider Paul Manafort.
Paul LePage says ‘political hooligans’ of Cruz camp have reneged at last minute on unity deal in brazen bid to sweep all delegate slots at state convention
Ted Cruz’s campaign faced more allegations of dirty tricks after the Maine governor, Paul LePage, took to Facebook to condemn the Texas senator’s campaign as being run by “greedy political hooligans.”
The fiery and controversial governor claimed on Friday that the Trump and Cruz campaigns had previously reached a “unity deal” to elect delegates to the national convention in proportion to results of the Pine Tree state’s 5 March caucuses.
Such an allocation would deliver 12 Cruz delegates, nine for Trump and two for John Kasich, the Ohio governor.
However, LePage, a Trump supporter, said on the eve of Maine’s state convention that the Cruz campaign had reneged on the deal, believing they could fill all 20 elected delegate slots on the ballot. “I can’t stand by and watch as Cruz and the Republican establishment forcibly overrule the votes of Mainers who chose Trump and Kasich,” said LePage.
While delegates are bound on the first ballot according to the results of state primaries and caucuses, they are unbound on subsequent ballots if a contested convention occurs. Such votes would have nothing to do with the results from the states and be solely decided by the individual delegates.
The Guardian can confirm there was discussion of a unity slate in Maine; sources disagree on whether a deal was ever reached.
In his intervention, LePage used strikingly personal language to attack a Cruz campaign operative for “stabb[ing]us in the back”. It marks an escalation in rhetoric even as the campaign seeks to roll back Trump’s aggressive language and his use of the nickname “lyin’ Ted” for Cruz.
Earl Bierman, the state chair for the Cruz campaign, told the Guardian on Thursday night: “There had been a tentative agreement for a unity slate but that was with the understanding that Cruz’s campaign is grassroots.”
Bierman said that he had thought it was a good idea to avoid intra-party strife but grassroots Cruz supporters rebelled at the unity proposal and nixed it. “They just said no, we are not having it, they put forth their own slate,” said Bierman.
Trump has attacked Cruz for months over allegations of dirty tricks on the eve of the Iowa caucuses. The frontrunner has claimed Cruz engaged in “fraud” after the Cruz campaign shared a CNN story only minutes before the Iowa caucuses began that suggested Ben Carson might be dropping out. Instead, Carson later clarified he had been going home to do laundry.
Trump also attacked Cruz for using a mailer to shame potential caucus-goers into voting by showing their turnout record along with neighbors’. Although this tactic is perfectly legal and been backed by political science research, Trump has repeatedly condemned as dishonest.
The resulting controversy is likely to cause major political turmoil in Maine. While Cruz may have the majority of the delegates needed to elect their full slate, LePage is still the state’s sitting governor and has a reputation for retaliatory behavior in state politics.
If the full Cruz slate is elected, LePage, who is running as a Trump delegate, will not be elected to represent the state he governs.
Both campaigns have sent top surrogates to the state, with former presidential candidates Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina appearing on behalf of Trump and Cruz respectively. It represents the next front in the ongoing complex battle to fill delegate slots and prepare for a contested convention.
Bierman said he was confused about why LePage was “crying foul”, noting that in a proxy contest for RNC national committeeman, he himself had lost to state representative Alex Willette, a Trump supporter and close ally of LePage. Based on that result, the Trump campaign should be well placed to elect delegates at the state convention.
Bierman also pushed back at LePage’s attack on the Cruz campaign staffer, whom he described as honorable. He noted the national campaign had no involvement in any discussions on a unity deal. The Cruz campaign is “not telling grassroots in Maine what they can or can’t do”, said Bierman. Instead the grassroots supporters were giving the Cruz campaign marching orders.
So far, Cruz, whose campaign has long focused on delegate hunting has been at a distinct advantage over Trump. The frontrunner has only beefed up his delegate outreach in the past six weeks, bringing over a number of former operatives from the Carson campaign, led by the veteran strategist Ed Brookover as well as thelongtime Republican insider Paul Manafort.
[h=1]Why online voting in the state that Cruz swept was so flawed[/h]
Utah’s new online voting system was supposed to boost participation in the Republican caucus, but instead it was plagued by glitches. What went wrong?
One month after the Utah presidential caucuses, the state Republican party still has not published its final results as evidence amasses of a breakdown in the party’s new online voting system as well as email and other communication failures.
The 22 March caucus, which moved the reliably red state’s place in the presidential calendar up by three months, was notable for Ted Cruz’s lopsided victory and the firewall the establishment Republicans hoped Cruz could establish to block Donald Trump’s path to the nomination.
But the caucus also offered the kind of electoral dysfunction that Trump has repeatedly characterized as a “rigged system” – a private party election without state oversight and with little transparency about either its conduct or its exact outcome.
Days after stories of different sorts of electoral dysfunction emerged from New York and Arizona, Utah’s Republican party appears to be in disarray, with state and local party officials pointing fingers at each other as they gear up for this weekend’s state convention.
As of Friday, the state party’s website still linked to a results tally from 24 March showing 88.68% of precincts reporting, with some counties’ counts as low as 45%.
While these figures appear to be outdated, the state party could offer no reassurance that the vote count was in fact complete.
“Some people went out of town or are sick, causing a delay in getting information to us,” said party spokeswoman Cindie Quintana. “We are updating as we get results.” County officials with some of the lowest published tallies took vigorous exception to Quintana’s characterization of the problem, blaming the delays instead on email failures and US postal service deliveries that never arrived.
By far the biggest problem to emerge has been a new online voting system that the party hoped would encourage the participation of tens of thousands of extra people, including Mormon missionaries stationed abroad. On the eve of the election, the party told one news outlet that 59,000 had signed up to vote online.
Thereafter, party chair James Evans revised that figure down to 30,000, then to27,000, acknowledging that as many as 13,000 people had tried to sign up but could not because of a variety of technical problems. Up and down the state, voters reported being unable to obtain the 30-character personalized password needed to register to vote online. Others were unable to enter it successfully.
“My wife called tech support to get a code issued or reissued and she sat on hold for hours. At one point, a voice came on and said, ‘All our operators are busy, goodbye’. A lot of people had challenges,” said Marc Stallings, a GOP legislative chair in St George in south-western Utah.
In response to the reported problems, the party extended the deadline for online registration by two days, leading to another potential problem, according to Marc McLemore, party chair in Garfield County in central Utah.
He said he received the list of voters earmarked for online voting before the new window for online registration had closed – raising at least the possibility that someone could vote twice, once online and again at their local precinct.
The state party disregarded warnings from prominent computer scientists and from the National Institute for Standards and Technology, which oversees federal certification of voting equipment, that online voting systems are dangerouslyvulnerable to malware, putting both the integrity and the secrecy of the vote at risk.
On the contrary, chairman Evans put out a statement after the election touting what he called the country’s “first completely online presidential election” in which turnout had reached “historical numbers”.
No part of that statement appears to be entirely correct. The caucus was not “completely online” because more than 200,000 people, according to the party, voted at their precincts, more than eight times the number said to have voted over the internet. It was also not a first in the United States, because the Arizona Democratic party experimented with online voting in its 2000 primary, with similarly unsatisfactory results.
Limited forms of online voting have occurred since, notably in Alaska.
Turnout on 22 March was not “historical” – in fact it was significantly lower than in 2008, when Utah held primaries instead of caucuses.
The mess has led to a lot of finger-pointing and not a lot of clarity. Smartmatic, the London-based international voting equipment company that ran the online election in Utah, distanced itself from any role in the registration process when first asked about it by the Guardian. That part of the election, a spokesman said, had been handled by the online event site Eventbrite.
Eventbrite denied causing any problems, saying it had nothing to do with issuing passwords or other technical aspects of the election. It had merely provided the state party with a “pre-RSVP” list of who wanted to participate in the caucus, and how. “We experienced no issues at any point in time with registrations for the caucuses,” a company spokesperson said.
Smartmatic then revised its initial statement, saying much of the confusion arose not because of password problems but because people who had signed up with Eventbrite did not necessarily realise they needed to do anything else. Smartmatic said 27,490 people ended up registering to vote online, and 24,486 actually voted that way.
Evans, the state GOP chair, did not respond to multiple, detailed invitations to comment. In his public statements, he has remained upbeat about online voting and says he will recommend its reuse in 2020. County-level officials, by contrast, expressed deep dissatisfaction with the Smartmatic voting system. “At best, it was flawed,” McLemore, the Garfield County chair, said. “It either needs to be done away with, or fixed. I don’t care which.”
“The whole thing was not well enough organized,” McLemore said. “I don’t think the presidential voting went well at all.”
Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Saturday 23 April 2016 01.14 BST
Utah’s new online voting system was supposed to boost participation in the Republican caucus, but instead it was plagued by glitches. What went wrong?
One month after the Utah presidential caucuses, the state Republican party still has not published its final results as evidence amasses of a breakdown in the party’s new online voting system as well as email and other communication failures.
The 22 March caucus, which moved the reliably red state’s place in the presidential calendar up by three months, was notable for Ted Cruz’s lopsided victory and the firewall the establishment Republicans hoped Cruz could establish to block Donald Trump’s path to the nomination.
But the caucus also offered the kind of electoral dysfunction that Trump has repeatedly characterized as a “rigged system” – a private party election without state oversight and with little transparency about either its conduct or its exact outcome.
Days after stories of different sorts of electoral dysfunction emerged from New York and Arizona, Utah’s Republican party appears to be in disarray, with state and local party officials pointing fingers at each other as they gear up for this weekend’s state convention.
As of Friday, the state party’s website still linked to a results tally from 24 March showing 88.68% of precincts reporting, with some counties’ counts as low as 45%.
While these figures appear to be outdated, the state party could offer no reassurance that the vote count was in fact complete.
“Some people went out of town or are sick, causing a delay in getting information to us,” said party spokeswoman Cindie Quintana. “We are updating as we get results.” County officials with some of the lowest published tallies took vigorous exception to Quintana’s characterization of the problem, blaming the delays instead on email failures and US postal service deliveries that never arrived.
By far the biggest problem to emerge has been a new online voting system that the party hoped would encourage the participation of tens of thousands of extra people, including Mormon missionaries stationed abroad. On the eve of the election, the party told one news outlet that 59,000 had signed up to vote online.
Thereafter, party chair James Evans revised that figure down to 30,000, then to27,000, acknowledging that as many as 13,000 people had tried to sign up but could not because of a variety of technical problems. Up and down the state, voters reported being unable to obtain the 30-character personalized password needed to register to vote online. Others were unable to enter it successfully.
“My wife called tech support to get a code issued or reissued and she sat on hold for hours. At one point, a voice came on and said, ‘All our operators are busy, goodbye’. A lot of people had challenges,” said Marc Stallings, a GOP legislative chair in St George in south-western Utah.
In response to the reported problems, the party extended the deadline for online registration by two days, leading to another potential problem, according to Marc McLemore, party chair in Garfield County in central Utah.
He said he received the list of voters earmarked for online voting before the new window for online registration had closed – raising at least the possibility that someone could vote twice, once online and again at their local precinct.
The state party disregarded warnings from prominent computer scientists and from the National Institute for Standards and Technology, which oversees federal certification of voting equipment, that online voting systems are dangerouslyvulnerable to malware, putting both the integrity and the secrecy of the vote at risk.
On the contrary, chairman Evans put out a statement after the election touting what he called the country’s “first completely online presidential election” in which turnout had reached “historical numbers”.
No part of that statement appears to be entirely correct. The caucus was not “completely online” because more than 200,000 people, according to the party, voted at their precincts, more than eight times the number said to have voted over the internet. It was also not a first in the United States, because the Arizona Democratic party experimented with online voting in its 2000 primary, with similarly unsatisfactory results.
Limited forms of online voting have occurred since, notably in Alaska.
Turnout on 22 March was not “historical” – in fact it was significantly lower than in 2008, when Utah held primaries instead of caucuses.
The mess has led to a lot of finger-pointing and not a lot of clarity. Smartmatic, the London-based international voting equipment company that ran the online election in Utah, distanced itself from any role in the registration process when first asked about it by the Guardian. That part of the election, a spokesman said, had been handled by the online event site Eventbrite.
Eventbrite denied causing any problems, saying it had nothing to do with issuing passwords or other technical aspects of the election. It had merely provided the state party with a “pre-RSVP” list of who wanted to participate in the caucus, and how. “We experienced no issues at any point in time with registrations for the caucuses,” a company spokesperson said.
Smartmatic then revised its initial statement, saying much of the confusion arose not because of password problems but because people who had signed up with Eventbrite did not necessarily realise they needed to do anything else. Smartmatic said 27,490 people ended up registering to vote online, and 24,486 actually voted that way.
Evans, the state GOP chair, did not respond to multiple, detailed invitations to comment. In his public statements, he has remained upbeat about online voting and says he will recommend its reuse in 2020. County-level officials, by contrast, expressed deep dissatisfaction with the Smartmatic voting system. “At best, it was flawed,” McLemore, the Garfield County chair, said. “It either needs to be done away with, or fixed. I don’t care which.”
“The whole thing was not well enough organized,” McLemore said. “I don’t think the presidential voting went well at all.”
Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Saturday 23 April 2016 01.14 BST
[h=1]Secretive group of Hollywood conservatives suddenly dissolves[/h]
The announcement by the Friends of Abe fueled speculation that infighting over Donald Trump’s candidacy had drained commitment
The Friends of Abe has acted as a clandestine club for Hollywood conservatives for more than a decade, hosting secret events where they could vent rightwing views and hear speeches from visiting Tea Party luminaries.
But on Thursday the organisation – which counts Jon Voight, Jerry Bruckheimer and Kelsey Grammer among its 1,500 members – made an abrupt announcement: it was dissolving.
“Effective immediately, we are going to begin to wind down the 501 c3 organization, bring the Sustaining Membership dues to an end, and do away with the costly infrastructure and the abespal.com website,” the executive director, Jeremy Boreing, told members in an email, a copy of which the Guardian has seen.
“Today, because we have been successful in creating a community that extends far beyond our events, people just don’t feel as much of a need to show up for every speaker or bar night, and fewer people pay the dues that help us maintain that large infrastructure.”
The announcement caught members by surprise and fueled speculation that infighting over Donald Trump’s candidacy, among other factors, had drained commitment. Others said the group had been losing steam for years.
Instead of electrifying the organisation, California’s 7 June primary, a final and potentially decisive showdown between Trump and his GOP rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich, appeared to frazzle it.
Lionel Chetwynd, a producer and screenwriter and co-founder of the FOA, recently spoke of the primary campaign causing a “civil war in slow motion”, which fractured friendships and shredded solidarity.
Boreing, a director and producer, put a positive gloss on the announcement, saying the initial hunger for fellowship had prompted the group to build an expensive website, rent offices and hire staff, including lawyers and accountants.
“It’s time to change how we do it. As our group has grown in size and success, many of the structures that helped us grow have become less useful ... It means an end to the standing organization, but not an end to the mission or the fellowship.”
Boreing vowed to maintain the mailing list and stage events, but without the infrastructure, staff or budget requirements.
“We will still get together for drinks and speakers, but we may reassess how we approach those events logistically. In short, FOA will return to its roots. It will be a passion project, like it was in the beginning ... We’ll still be a private organization that protects the names of our members at all costs.”
Boreing did not immediately respond to interview requests.
Members expressed surprise and dismay at the weakening, and perhaps loss, of a refuge from what they see as Hollywood’s bullying liberal ethos.
It was the one place where many of its members – actors, producers, writers and technicians – felt safe from liberal sneers and potential retribution.
“As a conservative, if you expressed your political views at work you would be weeded out,” said Jack Marino, a film-maker. “At Abe events we could get together over dinner and hang out with our own kind and speak freely.”
Another member, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed bafflement and disappointment at the group’s winding down.
Formed in 2005, high-profile supporters include Clint Eastwood, Gary Sinise and Patricia Heaton, who played Debra Barone in the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond.
The group, named after Abraham Lincoln, swore members to secrecy by adopting a line from the film Fight Club: the first rule of the Friends of Abe is you do not talk about the Friends of Abe.
For a time it ran a tightly controlled Facebook page and banned members from talking to the press, taking pictures or tweeting at events – rules occasionally breached.
In addition to Trump and Cruz, the group hosted the likes of Antonin Scalia, Dick Cheney, John Boehner and Rush Limbaugh at venues around Los Angeles, including the Reagan library, the Luxe Hotel and the Bistro Garden.
It became more widely known – and a rallying point for Republicans – when news leaked in 2014 that the Internal Revenue Service was investigating the group in connection with its application for tax-exempt status. The IRS subsequentlygranted the status.
Rory Carroll in Los Angeles
@rorycarroll72
Friday 22 April 2016 03.14 BST
The announcement by the Friends of Abe fueled speculation that infighting over Donald Trump’s candidacy had drained commitment
The Friends of Abe has acted as a clandestine club for Hollywood conservatives for more than a decade, hosting secret events where they could vent rightwing views and hear speeches from visiting Tea Party luminaries.
But on Thursday the organisation – which counts Jon Voight, Jerry Bruckheimer and Kelsey Grammer among its 1,500 members – made an abrupt announcement: it was dissolving.
“Effective immediately, we are going to begin to wind down the 501 c3 organization, bring the Sustaining Membership dues to an end, and do away with the costly infrastructure and the abespal.com website,” the executive director, Jeremy Boreing, told members in an email, a copy of which the Guardian has seen.
“Today, because we have been successful in creating a community that extends far beyond our events, people just don’t feel as much of a need to show up for every speaker or bar night, and fewer people pay the dues that help us maintain that large infrastructure.”
The announcement caught members by surprise and fueled speculation that infighting over Donald Trump’s candidacy, among other factors, had drained commitment. Others said the group had been losing steam for years.
Instead of electrifying the organisation, California’s 7 June primary, a final and potentially decisive showdown between Trump and his GOP rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich, appeared to frazzle it.
Lionel Chetwynd, a producer and screenwriter and co-founder of the FOA, recently spoke of the primary campaign causing a “civil war in slow motion”, which fractured friendships and shredded solidarity.
Boreing, a director and producer, put a positive gloss on the announcement, saying the initial hunger for fellowship had prompted the group to build an expensive website, rent offices and hire staff, including lawyers and accountants.
“It’s time to change how we do it. As our group has grown in size and success, many of the structures that helped us grow have become less useful ... It means an end to the standing organization, but not an end to the mission or the fellowship.”
Boreing vowed to maintain the mailing list and stage events, but without the infrastructure, staff or budget requirements.
“We will still get together for drinks and speakers, but we may reassess how we approach those events logistically. In short, FOA will return to its roots. It will be a passion project, like it was in the beginning ... We’ll still be a private organization that protects the names of our members at all costs.”
Boreing did not immediately respond to interview requests.
Members expressed surprise and dismay at the weakening, and perhaps loss, of a refuge from what they see as Hollywood’s bullying liberal ethos.
It was the one place where many of its members – actors, producers, writers and technicians – felt safe from liberal sneers and potential retribution.
“As a conservative, if you expressed your political views at work you would be weeded out,” said Jack Marino, a film-maker. “At Abe events we could get together over dinner and hang out with our own kind and speak freely.”
Another member, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed bafflement and disappointment at the group’s winding down.
Formed in 2005, high-profile supporters include Clint Eastwood, Gary Sinise and Patricia Heaton, who played Debra Barone in the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond.
The group, named after Abraham Lincoln, swore members to secrecy by adopting a line from the film Fight Club: the first rule of the Friends of Abe is you do not talk about the Friends of Abe.
For a time it ran a tightly controlled Facebook page and banned members from talking to the press, taking pictures or tweeting at events – rules occasionally breached.
In addition to Trump and Cruz, the group hosted the likes of Antonin Scalia, Dick Cheney, John Boehner and Rush Limbaugh at venues around Los Angeles, including the Reagan library, the Luxe Hotel and the Bistro Garden.
It became more widely known – and a rallying point for Republicans – when news leaked in 2014 that the Internal Revenue Service was investigating the group in connection with its application for tax-exempt status. The IRS subsequentlygranted the status.
Rory Carroll in Los Angeles
@rorycarroll72
Friday 22 April 2016 03.14 BST
