Candidates, even Trump, shift to delegate hunt

Posted: 9:51 PM, Apr 10, 2016
Updated: 2016-04-10 21:55:37-04
Candidates, even Trump, shift to delegate hunt
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are coming to terms with the cold mathematical reality of chasing delegates ahead of their nominating conventions, with front-runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump driving for challenge-proof majorities against rivals who won't go away.
For Trump, who remains well short of the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the GOP nod, that means his campaign focuses on developing a delegate-centered strategy akin to the one that rival Ted Cruz has pursued for months.
Even so, the billionaire developer later in the day complained that the system is "corrupt" and "crooked" and said it's unfair that the person who wins the most votes may not be the nominee.
"What they're trying to do is subvert the movement with crooked shenanigans," Trump told a crowd of thousands gathered in a packed airport hangar in Rochester, New York. "We're supposed to be a democracy," he added, drawing parallels with Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.
If denied the GOP nomination, he went on to warn, "you're going to have a big problem, folks, because there are people who don't like what's going on."
For Clinton, who lost Wyoming Saturday night to Sanders, it means maintaining her commanding leads among delegates and popular votes no matter how many states Sanders wins — or how much "momentum" he claims. Key to her drive is a win April 19 in New York, which she represented in the U.S. Senate.
Asked in a CNN interview that aired Sunday whether she's quietly preparing a strategy in the unlikely event of a contested Democratic convention, she replied, "No, I intend to have the number of delegates that are required to be nominated."
Clinton's campaign is pushing for big wins across the northeast, in an effort to gain what they've termed an "all but insurmountable" lead in the delegate race. It's a strategy shared by Trump, who is also looking to win all the delegates he can in New York.
With neither front-runner strong enough to claim inevitability, their challengers stuck to the hope that by winning more races and cozying up to delegates, they stand a chance of eventually grabbing their respective party nominations.
For Ohio Gov. John Kasich, it's about winning enough delegates to keep all candidates from locking up the majority. And that means sowing doubts about the effect that a Trump or Cruz nomination would have on the party. He said there's "great concern" not just about how each would represent the GOP, but about the prospect of a blowout loss up and down the ticket in November.
Sanders, behind Clinton by hundreds of delegates and more than 2.4 million votes, is pointing to statewide wins in seven of the last eight contests. But his latest victory in Wyoming did nothing to help him in the delegate chase: Both Sanders and Clinton got seven delegates.
"Our plan right now is to win this thing," Sanders said on "Face the Nation." ''I think we have a real shot to end up with more delegates."