Mark Pingel (left) and his father, Brent, hand out Ted Cruz stickers at the North Dakota Republican convention in Fargo on Saturday, April 2. The Pingels drove from Watford City, about seven hours away. | AP Photo What a delegate war really looks like The GOP campaigns get up close and personal to woo convention supporters.

FARGO, N.D. — With a cocktail in one hand and cellphone in the other, Jessica Unruh was texting with a Donald Trump adviser when a Ted Cruz supporter tapped her on the shoulder.

Suddenly, she was on the move across the Ramada Plaza ballroom, ushered to the front of a line of fans waiting for a photo with Carly Fiorina, who, upon being whispered Unruh’s identity, invited her through a back door to a more secluded spot where they could talk. The photo line could wait.


By the time Unruh emerged a few minutes later, the Trump adviser who’d been texting her was waiting himself — in person. “I’m so sorry,” she apologized. “I’m getting pulled away in a million directions.” Soon, Unruh was pulled anew, bypassing another long line in the halls of the hotel to find herself face-to-face with Ben Carson.

“Two hard sells today, no doubt,” said Unruh, a state senator from North Dakota. She’s neither a major donor nor famous. But Unruh was a candidate to be one of her state’s delegates to the Republican National Convention — a distinction that put her at the center of the political universe over the weekend.

This is the new reality of the Republican primary. Cruz and Trump are no longer just battling over states. They’re battling over people.

For months, the fight for the Republican nomination has played out in candidates' speeches, television interviews, debate performances and megarallies. But amid growing signs that the party could be headed to its first contested convention in a generation, the campaign is now being waged over the individual delegates, people like Unruh, who could ultimately hold the key to the GOP nomination.

So Unruh was getting the full lobbying treatment.

“Here this weekend, ya’ll are going to be electing 28 delegates,” Cruz said in a speech to the more than 1,600 state officials and activists gathered in Fargo on Saturday. “It is entirely possible the men and women gathered here will decide this entire primary, will decide this nomination.”

It’s no exaggeration. As Cruz presses to deny Trump the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the Republican nomination in states still to vote like Wisconsin, New York and California, a second front is underway to determine who the actual delegates will be. Most of them will be free to vote for whomever they prefer should Trump fall short on the first ballot. Those in North Dakota were even more coveted; they will arrive in Cleveland as free agents from the start.

What played out in Fargo over the weekend was, in miniature, a portrait of the delegate battle to come: a mix of intrigue and intense lobbying, whispers of delegate misdirection, a super PAC’s quiet involvement, and a last-minute push to change the rules as everyone jockeyed to identify and elect loyalists.

It was also a preview of what a contested convention might look like. The campaigns argued over big things, like who would make the best president, and little things, like who served the best snacks. And everything seemed potentially decisive.

Some Trump operatives working the convention bragged about their spread. One noted theirs was the only campaign to offer hot food — eggrolls and meatballs — on Friday night: “In a place like this, food is the ultimate swag.” At the convention site itself, among the available food for sale not from the campaigns was oil-and-gas industry themed fare, such as “Frack Jacks” (buttermilk pancake mix), “Drill Bits” (spicy crackers), “Sweet Crude” (wild chokecherry syrup) and “Shale Crunch” (an almond-butter snack).

Cruz was the earliest to organize here and unquestionably had the deepest connections on the ground. His top local organizer, Bette Grande, has been supporting him for months, dating back to when Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, came to her house last September during a North Dakota campaign swing. Late Saturday night, as Fiorina posed for pictures nearby, Grande was hunched over a laptop finalizing a pro-Cruz delegate slate that would win big the next day.

Trump was playing catch-up, but doing so ably, deploying four operatives as he nabbed the endorsement of the state’s lone House member, Rep. Kevin Cramer, who worked over the weekend to help place at least some Trump supporters on the state party’s list of recommended delegates.

John Kasich’s forces were present but not did not compete at the same level. While Cruz came in person and sent Fiorina for three full days as a surrogate and Trump sent Carson for a speech and delegate-wooing, Kasich tapped former New Hampshire Sen. Gordon Humphrey, who wandered around the Ramada and convention site as unknown to the people in the crowd as they were to him. In a telling moment, Humphrey addressed the state convention after the ballots for the national delegation had already been cast.

“I was not familiar with the Kasich surrogate,” said James Poolman, the North Dakota GOP vice chairman, who was elected as a national delegate.

Meanwhile, an anti-Trump super PAC, Our Principles PAC, was quietly working the delegates to lobby against Trump. The group called every delegate on Friday and Saturday, deployed three local operatives to canvass the crowd and and put anti-Trump literature on every delegate’s chair.

“We will fight for every last delegate vote all the way to Cleveland,” said Brian Baker, a senior adviser to the group.

The scene in Fargo was strange at times. At one end of the Ramada on Saturday night, Carson was meeting with potential delegates in small groups. At the other, Fiorina was doing the photo line. In between, kids were running the halls in bathing suits, taking advantage of the hotel’s giant indoor water slide as their parents refilled buckets of bottled beer. Humphrey, meanwhile, held court for an hours-long dinner at the Ramada’s restaurant with targeted potential delegates.

On Saturday, Cruz delivered a 1 p.m. speech but his work began earlier in the the morning, which he spent wooing key North Dakota GOP figures in the tunnels of Scheels Arena, as his campaign team brought selected state activists and supportive lawmakers in for photos and face time.

Curly Haughland, the state’s Republican National Committee member, relished all the jockeying. He’s a longtime advocate of empowering Republican delegates, not the voters, in the primary process. “The members choose in a closed association,” he said. “The voters choose in the fall.”

Haughland, whose RNC post automatically makes him a national delegate, has kept his 2016 loyalties to himself, as did some other notables. “I have no idea what’s going on,” Gov. Jack Dalrymple said, when asked about his 2016 favorite. “I’m a terrible source.”

The state party began by selecting a recommended slate of 25 delegates to the national convention, but the well-organized Cruz campaign had other plans. It pushed its own slate on the convention floor. But moments before voting was set to begin, one activist rose and ask all the delegates to declare their allegiances.

The party chairman put the idea to a voice vote and said it lost — only to be showered with boos. He called for a visual vote and again declared the motion a loser. “Call the roll,” came the shouts. He agreed, as the party's executive director, Roz Leighton, walked off the floor and could be overheard saying, “This has descended into chaos.”

Things calmed quickly (the idea was ultimately voted down). But it was not hard to imagine a similar scene playing out in 100 days in Cleveland, but on a far larger scale and stage.

When the final tally came in, Cruz’s campaign had crushed it, successfully filling 18 of the 25 available slots. Three of the remaining spots were for people, including Dalrymple and his wife, who remain uncommitted. A fourth, the state treasurer, told POLITICO she would support Cruz if the convention were held that day. Trump, in other words, had been thoroughly outmaneuvered, scoring only a single delegate who had signaled publicly any interest in supporting the Manhattan businessman.

As for Unruh, she was among the winners, guaranteeing her a chance to do it all over again this summer in Cleveland. She’d emerged from her 45 minutes with Carson on Saturday night and said she was still not ready to share “any leanings.” But by Sunday morning, when Cruz put out his delegate slate, the second name on the second column left no doubt.

It read “Jessica Unruh.”