Cruz Adviser: Ted’s Team Building 700-Delegate Bloc for GOP Convention Platform Battle Over Guns, Life

A top official in the suspended presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R.-Texas) told Breitbart News that the senator’s campaign organization is deploying operatives to this weekend’s Georgia Republican State Convention, part of the senator’s effort to build a bloc of delegates at the Republican National Convention in July.

The senator instructed his operatives to build up a bloc of votes to dominate both the party’s Rules Committee and the writing of the platform, said Saul Anuzis, a senior advisor to the campaign.

“Even now, we have volunteers working around the country to make sure that Cruz-friendly, conservative-friendly delegates are elected,” he said.

Anuzis said he would lead the team Cruz is sending to Augusta for the convention, but the senator will not be attending state conventions himself.

Cruz will absolutely fight any attempt to weaken the GOP platform’s commitment to restore legal protections for the unborn or to restore gun rights, he said.

“There are fundamental issues that separate Republicans from Democrats, conservatives from liberals,” he said. “Life, guns, and traditional families are issues that are the cornerstone of our party and the conservative movement,” he said.

The Cruz advisor said the campaign is concerned with protecting the party’s commitment to conservative principles as Donald J. Trump assumes control of the GOP.

“That is a very dangerous place for a politician to be,” said Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.

“Donald Trump is a populist. He has moved from a populist-liberal to a populist-conservative. We have traditionally killed politicians for flip-flopping, evolving or changing based on the political winds,” he said.

“Trump has been able to do that very effectively, so we just want to make sure that conservatives still have a voice as we go into the convention.”

The former manager of Cruz’s Michigan campaign said the campaign is still organized, with state chairmen and coordinators in each congressional district, and the campaign is developing its whip system for the convention.

In addition to the 559 delegates already bound to Cruz, Anuzis said he is confident the Cruz bloc will reach up to 700 delegates at the convention in Cleveland. “They are conservatives and they care about the same issues that Ted Cruz cares about,” he said. More than 300 delegates have not yet been designated.

In addition to the primary or caucus, many states also select delegates at their party conventions. Each state party has its own rules, but many, such as Georgia, have a variation of a process where a candidate is awarded a number of delegates, but those slots are actually filled at the convention. Republican convention delegates are only bound to their designated candidate on the first nomination ballot and there are no rules controlling how the delegates vote on rules or the platform.