Trump's Bay Area Challenge: Turning Popular Support Into Loyal Delegates

The importance of this year's Republican presidential primary in California has breathed new life into GOP events large and small.

The last time the state party met, minor tweaks to the party platform passed as big news. When the GOP convention kicks off in Burlingame on Friday, hordes of media from all over the country will be there to record it all.

Assembled party officials, delegates and activists will hear from the three leading Republican candidates for president, starting with a Friday luncheon speech from front-runner Donald Trump.

Trump's arrival at the convention will mark the first time his campaign has focused on the region since last summer, when the candidate zeroed in from afar on the horrific killing of Kathryn Steinle at San Francisco's Pier 14 to highlight his strict views on immigration policy.

Last week, a group of roughly 50 Republicans gathered at the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco for a meeting of the Nob Hill Republican Women's Club Federated. California's electoral relevance will give Republican voters, like the 50 or so assembled there, an outsized importance. Just 18 percent of voters across the Bay Area are registered as Republican, but the region will send 36 delegates (three for the winner of each congressional district) to July's national convention in Cleveland.

"All who are Republicans are fed up with the fact that we elected the Senate and the House of Representatives majorities and they did nothing. They did nothing!" bellows Republican Carol Hehmeyer. "That has a lot of us very angry, very angry."

Hehmeyer is a Trump supporter, and she says she's heard similar support for the controversial businessman at the half-dozen Republican clubs she belongs to around the Bay Area.

"I think it is because he seems to be someone who can negotiate well and get the job done," Hehmeyer says. "He relates really well to people. He’s friends with people on all sides of every issue."

Leading in Bay Area

The anecdotal support for Trump's campaign in the Bay Area is reflected in a recent Field Poll, which found him leading by 7 points (39 to 32 percent) over Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, matching his statewide lead in the same survey.

Bette Sue Schack and Paulina McGill of Danville are both supporting Trump. Their frustration with the direction of the country matches their candidates' rhetoric, but felt a bit out of place at the serene Blackhawk Country Club, nestled at the foot of Mount Diablo, where they're attending a Republican candidates forum.

“We just feel sold out by the Republican Party," says Schack, a local real estate agent.

"I want the wall built. For 50 years they’ve talked about the wall, and neither Democrats or Republicans have done it," she adds. "That’s what he says he’s going to do, and I think our country is at such risk."

Trump's controversial tone doesn't bother another Danville supporter, Heidi Hill.

"Yes, he can be a little crass but I don’t really care because he’s the first person in here who isn’t just laying down and not saying anything.”

Challenge to Organize Delegate Slate

California's Republican primary process places the onus on campaigns to convert popular support from voters like Schack into tangible delegate gains. The campaigns must submit a list of delegates (three for each congressional district, along with three alternates) to the state party by May 9. The winner of each congressional district gets to send their delegates from that district to the national convention in Cleveland.

That system would seem to benefit Trump's campaign more than the process in other states. For one, in the case of a contested convention, California's delegates are bound to support their candidate until after the second ballot. Even then, Trump's delegates from the state will be handpicked by the campaign, and are presumably less likely to jump ship.

But finding loyal supporters to serve as delegates could prove challenging for Trump in deep-blue California. In contrast to the Cruz campaign, which has been laying the groundwork in California for months, Trump's formal organization in the state just launched two weeks ago.

"It’s hard to build a good slate in six weeks, it’s like a five-months-plus project. It’s not easy," says Rohit Joy, chairman of the Republican Party of Contra Costa County and a Cruz supporter. "I mean you can get people off the street, but you want people who you can trust and who will stick with Cruz on multiple ballots. That’s what Trump would want, too."

Greg Coppes of Solano County is a candidate for state Senate in the North Bay. He says he's been contacted three to five times a week by candidates hoping to add him to their slate. But he senses a bit of disorganization from Trump's campaign.

"His people don't know that I've already been contacted several times," Coppes says.

Patty O'Day of Hercules would seem the ideal delegate for the Trump campaign. She's a self-proclaimed "Trumpster," and projects an unwavering belief in the candidate. She's also a seasoned political organizer in Contra Costa County, with the kind of political chops that could come in handy if chaos breaks out on the convention floor.

"I actually checked into it and considered doing it, but the reason I decided not to is I don’t really want to go into a bunch of riots," says O'Day. "I’m talking about violent people that are coming to protest."

Campaign to Organize Around Existing Groups

The man tasked with overseeing the process of identifying over 300 supporters is Tim Clark, recently named state director of the campaign. He's confident all the delegates the campaign sends from California to Cleveland will be loyal supporters.

"There are some local groups that have already formed and have been active in some cases for a year or more on behalf of Donald Trump. So we’re finding these groups and we’re benefiting from their activism, so our network is actually quite strong in the state," says Clark. “They’re Facebook groups, they’re groups that get out and hold rallies, they’ve been walking precincts knocking on doors. And we’ve been reaching out to them and they’ve been reaching out to us."

The degree to which Trump will capitalize on this support in the Bay Area will hinge on supporters like Karen Molden of Marin County.

"We need to finally put a businessman in the White House that can make the contracts, make the deals and be our spokesperson," she says. "He calls himself a 'blue-collar billionaire,' which is wonderful!"

Molden has already applied to be a Trump delegate in the 2nd Congressional District. She's hoping to be among the 1,237 delegates who will need to cast a vote for the business mogul to avoid a contested convention, an event Molden is confident the campaign will avoid.

"The pundits talk about that day in and day out, and we'll be so pleased to have this complete, as I'm sure Mr. Trump will be," she says.