Last week, presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump decidedly won in South Dakota. He has all but locked up the nomination to run for president on the G.O.P ticket.
The state Republicans will send twenty-six delegates to the party convention in Cleveland in mid-July. State G.O.P. officials call the gathering a rally for conservative ideas.
If you would have asked any Republican official, even a few months ago, they would have said they expected an open convention come July. But the dust settled early, and Trump emerged as the presumptive nominee, wiping out any chance of the first contested convention in 40 years.
Ryan Budmayr is the Executive director for South Dakota’s Republican Party. He says South Dakota’s delegates are duty bound to Trump.
“With our Republican delegates, they were elected back in March. But they don’t run for any individual candidate. They are unbound until the primary election in South Dakota that took place on June 7. And so, they are required and sign an oath to vote for whoever wins the South Dakota primary," Budmayr says.
Budmayr says since Trump has more or less secured the nomination, he should get elected as the nominee for president on the first ballot.
He says the process for selecting this year’s GOP candidate has turned out like the last several presidential elections…
“The last contested convention where it wasn’t locked up would have been Gerald Ford in ‘76. And so, essentially every convention since then the Republican presidential nominee has been decided going into the convention," Budmayr says.
Budmayr says after the Republican Party’s presidential candidate is elected, the rest of the convention is largely symbolic.
For a companion piece on the state delegates to the Democratic convention, click here.
