COLORADO SPRINGS — Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz effectively won Colorado on Friday, as he claimed a majority of the state’s 37 national delegates.

The Texas senator dominated the seven early delegate contests at the congressional district level, a clean sweep that earned him 17 bound national delegates and an additional four unpledged delegates who declared support for his campaign.

To officially win the state, according to party leaders, he needs 19 bound delegates: a mark he is expected to reach Saturday at the state GOP convention in Colorado Springs.

Cruz makes his Colorado debut at the party confab Saturday at the Broadmoor World Arena, where he is expected to win a significant share of the 13 national delegates at stake. The final three delegates in Colorado’s delegation are unpledged party leaders.

The Cruz campaign’s primacy showcases how Colorado’s GOP leaders united with the state’s diehard conservative activists against Donald Trump, whom party purists regard with skepticism.

Trump, the Republican front-runner, managed to claim only two alternate delegates in the 4th Congressional District, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s campaign left empty handed.

“We worked hard for many months leading up to this, and it shows,” said Regina Thomson, a leading grassroots organizer for the campaign. “He’s the conservative that most Republicans are looking for.”

Colorado Republicans awarded a dozen delegates Friday in a chaotic atmosphere that drew hundreds of party activists to a hotel ballroom — and overflowed into a courtyard. The candidates who competed for a seat at the national convention in Cleveland put on a show as they tried to stand out. One woman sang the first few words of “God Bless America” while others wore patriotic costumes and shouted conservative slogans.

“I’m pro-God. I’m pro-gun. And I’m pro-life,” said Jarilyn VanAtten, an unpledged delegate from Broomfield in her 10-second pitch for national delegate in the 2nd Congressional District convention.

The step-by-step complicated process is necessary after the state Republican Party canceled its binding straw poll at the March 1 caucus. The move put the decision in the hands of party activists — and left the vast majority of Republican voters out of the process. But Colorado’s delegates are now a prized commodity because the party’s nomination is still in question and unbound delegates would offer a unique prize at a contested convention.

Neither Trump nor Kasich will make the trip to the state convention, but both sent surrogates to preach their messages.

Trump is investing the bare minimum in Colorado — after the campaign made a strategic decision not to invest heavily in a place it felt favored “party insiders.”

“The process here doesn’t lend itself to our kind of campaign,” said Alan Cobb, a senior Trump adviser based in Kansas who is on the ground in Colorado Springs. “Our expectations are really low. If we get a delegate number higher than zero, it’s going to be a success.”

Kasich’s campaign sent former New Hampshire Sen. John Sununu to Colorado to campaign on his behalf, but he received a rough reception at the 5th Congressional District convention.

For Republicans to win the White House, Sununu told potential delegates, “there is only one way to do it, and that is to make John Kasich our nominee.”

The crowd booed.

“Listen, ladies and gentleman,” he implored, “you need to treat all the speakers fairly, and you need to think long and hard about what this election means to this country.”

A minute later, Sununu added: “He rolled back regulations on small businesses, created 400,000 jobs in Ohio. Did Donald Trump create 400,000 jobs? No!”

“Four million,” a Trump supporter in the crowd shouted.

Sununu said Colorado risks losing the U.S. Senate race, as well as both chambers of the legislature in November, if Trump is the nominee.

The Kasich campaign is putting forward a slate of delegates for the state GOP convention — but his advisers shifted tactics Friday as he opted to promote potential national delegates who want “an open convention” with “no backroom deals,” instead of delegates pledged to the candidate.

“There are so many unpledged people feeling the heavy hand of Cruz and … they’ve got the guns to their head: ‘You will do this,’ ” said Amy Stephens, former state House GOP leader from Monument. “So we said this: We support an open convention, it’s going to happen. And so we all might as well get used to this.”

John Frank: 303-954-2409, jfrank@denverpost.com or @ByJohnFrank