Mary Orndorff Troyan

Montgomery Advertiser

WASHINGTON – The two Alabama Republicans who will help write the rules at July's Republican National Convention are party delegates pledged to support Donald Trump.

State Rep. Ed Henry and Laura Payne were elected to the convention's Rules Committee on Saturday in Montgomery. That could be important to the Trump campaign if the presidential nomination is still contested by July.

In another sign of Trump’s strength in the state, Alabama Republicans also elected Sen. Jeff Sessions, a Trump adviser, to chair the state’s delegation to the convention.

Based on the results of the state’s March 1 primary, Alabama Republicans are sending 36 Trump delegates to the convention in Cleveland, along with 13 delegates committed to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and one delegate pledged to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who suspended his campaign March 15. Ohio Gov. John Kasich didn't win any delegates in Alabama but is still a candidate.

If no candidate gets the 1,237 delegates required to clinch the GOP nomination, the convention in Cleveland could require multiple ballots. That explains the intense interest in how each state party governs its delegates and who is named to the convention's Rules Committee. The committee could change the rules in ways that help or hurt individual candidates.

“It’s important we have the right people on the Rules Committee in case there is a lot of funny business going on,” said Perry Hooper Jr. of Montgomery, a Trump delegate.

State party officials said the Cruz delegates nominated a slate of candidates for all the convention committees, but the Trump slate won.

“The Trump majority did what a Cruz majority would do, which is use their majority to elect people to those committees,” Sessions said Tuesday. “These could be critical votes, who knows?”

Sessions, the only sitting U.S. senator to endorse Trump, was unopposed in running for chairman of the delegation. He said he doesn’t have any control over what his fellow delegates do on the Rules Committee.

“I haven’t begun to study the different attempts that might be made to undermine a majority or a near-majority of the delegates,” he said. “But we’ve elected two good people (to the Rules Committee) and they’ll cast their votes as they choose. I don’t have the power to direct them how to vote.”

For Cruz or Kasich supporters who may be looking to poach delegates from Trump in Alabama, the state party rules make it difficult. Like other states, delegates must vote at the convention for the candidate they originally pledged to support. If the convention vote goes to a second ballot Alabama's delegates may switch candidates only if the original candidate specifically releases them, or if two-thirds of the original candidate's delegates agree.

So if a Trump delegate wanted to switch to Cruz on the second ballot, two-thirds of the other Trump delegates would have to give their permission, a high hurdle compared to GOP rules in other states.

“The Alabama delegation is bound extremely tight,” said Alabama Republican Party Chairwoman Terry Lathan. “The interesting part is these are the rules that were in place in 2012 and the presidential year before then. There is nothing new here for us, except a microscopic lens of the nation is watching.”

Sessions, who didn’t run for a delegate slot, said he became a Trump delegate when there was a vacancy in the 1st Congressional District and he was voted in by his fellow Republicans.

It will be his first time as chairman of the state convention delegation. Sessions said he was encouraged to run by state party officials and members of the Trump organization.

“I’m hopeful we can maintain the good feeling that existed between the Cruz and Trump delegates, who had respect for one another,” Sessions said about Saturday's meeting in Montgomery.

Alabama Republicans also are preparing to select alternate delegates, whom Lathan said will be bound by the same rules that apply to elected delegates.

“When we go out to Cleveland we need to make sure everybody is loyal and make sure everybody signed on not just to nominate Trump for president, but every time a ballot comes up, period,” Hooper said.

Contact Mary Troyan at mtroyan@usatoday.com