Retired Burleson homemaker Maggie Wright, 70, has polished her resume and practiced her stump speech. She has lined up endorsements from her local preacher and Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller.

And she plans to make 350 phone calls ahead of the Republican Party of Texas' state convention on May 12 in Dallas, where she hopes to win election as a delegate to the party's national convention in Cleveland this July.

"It's like a little mini-campaign is what it is," said Wright, whose SUV is wrapped an image of her favored candidate, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

Delegates usually don't campaign for their posts, which typically serve only for ceremony.

Not this year.

Wright's burst of activity, and the national attention focused on the convention run-up, reflect a high-stakes game in which the delegates, not the voters, likely will choose the Republican nominee for president.

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While Cruz lags behind Donald Trump in the delegate count, his last shot at victory may lie with the delegate game and stalwart activists like Wright.

Wright, a tea party leader and veteran campaign volunteer, admits she does not completely understand how the process should unfold. She's not alone.

"I think it's so new to most people that, unless they've been briefed on it, they don't know either," said Jordan Berry, an Austin-based GOP strategist.

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That is because it has been 40 years since a presidential primary last deferred to the delegates' votes. Usually, the party nominee emerges months before the convention, and delegates show up mostly to have a good time. At Texas' GOP convention, the process of picking delegates for the national convention typically has been more of a "popularity contest" than a substantial election, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston.

Gift baskets, limo rides

This year, that process represents a crucial point of campaign strategy. So grassroots organizers have turned up the heat.

If no candidate arrives at the national convention in July with an outright majority of delegates from state primaries and caucuses, the assembly of 2,472 delegates will cast a series of ballots until a candidate wins a majority. With each successive ballot, more delegates will be freed from the obligation to vote according to the results of their state primaries and may act on personal preference.

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"If anybody thinks that there's not going to be some bribery going on, they're living in a fairy tale," said JoAnn Fleming, a veteran GOP organizer and tea party chair for the Cruz campaign, who foresees gift baskets and limousine rides.

She said it is a priority of campaigns to help install delegates who will not be swayed easily.

The rules of the Texas GOP say "a well-organized presidential campaign will work with county chairmen and party leaders … to identify persons to run as national delegates."

'Bought off'

So far, the Cruz campaign has far outpaced its rival in that game, getting full slates of friendly delegates elected at the cycle's first state conventions, in Colorado and North Dakota. Trump lashed out in response, calling the system "rigged," but party leaders countered that the rules long had been in place.

RELATED: Cruz's win in Colorado highlights Trump's weaknesses

As in Colorado and North Dakota, the Trump campaign appears all but absent from the delegate game in Texas.

Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier acknowledged that the senator's campaign was "building an organization (in Texas) that will allow us to secure the delegates we need to win." She declined to discuss any details.

Fleming said she is vetting the records of the candidates for delegate slots and drafting a list of endorsements ahead of the state convention. She looks for someone who cannot be "bought off" with fancy gifts and who will stick with Cruz through as many ballots as necessary.

She said few candidates elicit more confidence than Wright, who helped lead grassroots efforts for Cruz's 2012 underdog Senate campaign and has traveled the country in support of his presidential bid.

"They will not be able to bribe me," Wright said. "They'll have to kill me to get my vote."

That is part of the message she plans to bring to the state convention in a short speech she has been practicing for weeks, which she will deliver when her Congressional District No. 25 caucuses in a corner of the convention hall to pick its national delegates.

Like most other Texas delegate candidates, Wright's path toward the national convention started at one of nearly 1,000 precinct conventions across the state in early March, where local activists elected delegates to district conventions later that month. They picked Wright.

At district conventions, delegates were selected for the state convention, and Wright again made the cut.

At the state convention, delegates from each of Texas' 36 congressional districts will huddle in district caucuses and each pick three delegates to send to Cleveland in July. Also, they each will nominate one member to a committee that will select Texas' 44 statewide delegates.

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Then it's on to Cleveland. On the first two ballots at the national convention, 104 of the state's 155 delegates will be bound to vote for Cruz and 48 for Trump, as a result of the candidates' vote tallies in Texas' March 1 primary; three, who had been bound to Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, will be free agents.

By the third ballot, all will be free to vote as they wish, and many Trump delegates likely will flip their vote to Cruz.

Top figures in the Republican Party of Texas, including the governor, lieutenant governor and former governor have endorsed Ted Cruz, and the tea party groups that years ago helped launch his political career still dominate the party.

RELATED: GOP rivals will be years behind Cruz in Texas

"Cruz's operation here was quite good, and it goes deep into the kind of Republican activist who is likely to want to go to the convention," Rottinghaus said.

Even in the caucuses of districts that voted for Trump, delegates at the state convention could intentionally elect Cruz loyalists as national delegates with guidance from the Cruz campaign and help from Fleming's lists of approved candidates.

A total sweep seems unlikely. Elva Leyendecker, 61, a state convention delegate from Webb County, which voted Trump, says she "would not subvert the majority vote of my county," and plans to support only delegates who back Trump.

'Not a politician'

In Burleson, Wright is wrangling for a list of phone numbers for each of her district's 350 delegates to the state convention. She plans to call each one, introduce herself and announce her candidacy for national delegate. If she can't get phone numbers, she'll send postcards.

She also is printing a flier to distribute at the convention and lining up speakers to stump on her behalf.

"I'm not a politician, never will be," said the activist, who over the years has accrued a collection of photos of her hugging Cruz. "I'm just that retired housewife grandmother that really is concerned for our country."