After a string of defeats in delegate selection contests at Republican conclaves across the country this weekend, Donald Trump basked in a forum that has been much kinder to him: a mass rally in Albany, New York.

Trump’s best shot at pulling out the nomination rests on racking up enough big wins in the remaining primaries — including New York, where polls show him way ahead — to win it on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention, and avoid putting his fate in the hands of a pool of delegates that is stacked against him.


Trump knows it. In Albany, he leaned hard on his home-state populist appeal and repeatedly railed against the “crooked, crooked system” by which delegates to the Republican National Convention are chosen. “The system, folks, is rigged,” he said. “It’s a rigged, disgusting, dirty system.”

Trump, who has expressed his suspicion of caucuses after losing Iowa and then a series of losses in other caucus states to Cruz, suggested more widespread reforms to the Republican nominating process should he win the nomination and become the party’s standard-bearer. “Maybe we’ll clean up the system so that in future years we can have an honest contest,” he said.

It was all enough for Trump to feel sympathy for Bernie Sanders. Citing recent news accounts that report both Sanders’ recent primary wins and the conventional wisdom that the Vermont senator cannot win the Democratic nomination, Trump exclaimed, “Oh it’s rigged just like ours. It’s disgusting.”

In New York, Trump, a native of Queens, enjoys a home field advantage that has been magnified by Ted Cruz’s disparagement of the businessman’s “New York values.”

Trump led off on Monday by invoking Cruz’s attack, which the Texas senator launched early in the election ahead of contests in evangelical-heavy Iowa and across the South.

“Remember New York values when this character said with disdain and actually with hatred,” Trump said, before launching into a defense of his birthplace. “We have the greatest values. Nobody has values like us and the country loves New York, and when we took the worst attack in the history of our nation and we took that attack and we were strong and we were sharp and we were loving and we had heart … that’s what New York values really is and really represents.” Then, Trump led the crowd in a brief chant of “U-S-A.”

He circled back to Cruz’s comments again later in his remarks. “He does not like New York and he does not like the people of New York and that came out loud and clear,” Trump said. “Take a look at the scorn on his face when he said it.”

On Monday, Trump, who often recounts local tales of outsourcing on the campaign trail, armed his populist economic pitch with hard numbers about the state’s economy.

“Median household income in New York state is $3700 less per year, inflation adjusted than 1989,” he said. He said the state had lost 75 percent of its manufacturing jobs since 1960 and that “Albany lost another 1500 — think of that 1500 private sector jobs — just last year.”

He also promised to threaten American firms that outsource jobs with a 35 percent tariff on their exports to the United States.

The rally came on the heels of a series of setbacks Trump has suffered in the shadow primary to send loyal delegates to Cleveland. The businessman has been ramping up his criticisms of that process.

“It’s a fix,” Trump said of Colorado’s system, which chooses delegates directly at conventions, without holding a presidential preference primary or caucuses. “They said, ‘We’ll be do it by delegate.’ They said they’re going to do it by delegate. Oh isn’t that nice,” Trump said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

The Trump campaign fired its state director earlier this month, in the middle of the state's delegate selection process. The campaign appointed a new state director, but Cruz swept all 34 delegates that were allocated on Saturday.

In recent weeks, Trump’s campaign has struggled to contend with Ted Cruz’s operation in the byzantine process governing the selection of delegates to the Republican National Convention.

On Saturday, Indiana, which holds its primary vote on May 3, selected a slate of delegates that will likely vote against him at a contested convention, even if some are bound to him on the first ballot. In South Carolina, where Trump won the February primary handily, only one of his preferred delegates was among six selected over the weekend.

After eking out a popular vote win in the Louisiana primary in March, Trump was outmaneuvered in the delegate selection process by Cruz, who ended up winning more of them from the state than Trump. “I find out I get less delegates than this guy that got his ass kicked. Give me a break,” Trump lamented on Monday night.

After the defeat in Colorado, Trump took to the TV show Fox and Friends to vent about the process in the state, which does not hold a presidential preference primary or caucus, and instead chooses its delegates through party conventions.

“Well it really started with Colorado, and 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, and I see it,” he said in a Monday morning phone interview with the program.