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Newly hired senior adviser Ken McKay will join convention manager Paul Manafort’s team as they look to shore up the requisite 1,237 delegates to secure the Republican presidential nomination outright for Donald Trump. | AP Photo Trump hires another delegate adviser

Former Chris Christie campaign manager Ken McKay is joining Donald Trump’s presidential campaign as a senior adviser, the Trump campaign announced Monday.

McKay will join convention manager Paul Manafort’s team as they look to shore up the requisite 1,237 delegates to secure the Republican presidential nomination outright. Ted Cruz’s delegate operation has outmaneuvered Trump’s in several states, giving the Texas senator a key advantage to winning the nomination at a contested convention.

“Ken has a proven track record in winning state political races,” Trump said in a statement. “He will support our delegate operations team and bolster our ground game efforts. He brings tremendous experience to the job, and I know he is up to the task of working with my team.”

Trump in recent weeks has also expanded Manafort’s role and added former Scott Walker campaign manager Rick Wiley and former Ben Carson campaign manager Ed Brookover to his operation.

The announcement of McKay’s hiring comes a day after the Cruz and John Kasich agreed to cede states to each other in a last-ditch effort to blunt the New York billionaire’s path to 1,237.

Trump blasted the “desperate” Cruz-Kasich strategy with a blistering statement released early Monday. “It is sad that two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for ten months in order to try and stop that person from getting the Republican nomination,” Trump said.

“They are mathematically dead and this act only shows, as puppets of donors and special interests, how truly weak they and their campaigns are,” he added.

McKay was former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s chief of staff for 13 months and worked on Donald Carcieri’s gubernatorial campaigns in Rhode Island. McKay also worked as the Republican Governors Association’s political director under Christie’s chairmanship.