Unbound and Rubio delegates are fuming mad with the media. Media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, have been reporting that Ted Cruz has won their votes already. The delegates themselves say that isn’t so. Donald Trump won the state by four points but on election night, they both received 18 delegates. There are four unbound delegates and Rubio won five delegates. So if the news reports were right, Cruz would get 27 delegates to Trump’s 18. That would continue Cruz’s penchant for losing primary elections, while stealing delegates where the election went against him.
The delegates were forced to put out a letter stating that reports of Cruz winning their vote was inaccurate. The letter included the following excerpt:
“Any reporting of our intention to support one candidate over another before that time is simply not accurate.”
Luke Letlow, a Rubio delegate said:
“I’m reading all over social media and the press that we’re going one way as a group, but that’s just not accurate. It’s left us to get the message out that we haven’t chosen a side and that we remain uncommitted.”
Leslie Tassin Sr says he is conflicted:
“Sometimes I wake up at four in the morning thinking about it and I just can’t go back to sleep. Half my friends say Trump, the other half say Cruz, so they’re not helping me out. Some mornings I wake up leaning one way, others I wake up leaning another.”
In an apparent contradiction, Kirk Williamson, said that only the Trump campaign has contacted him personally and that the Cruz campaign never returned his calls:
“It flies in the face of the conventional wisdom about who is doing a better job of reaching out to the unpledged delegates.”
Tassin has also said that only the Trump campaign have reached out to him.
Neither candidate has any incentive to correct the WSJ’s blunder. Cruz wants to pretend he has more support than he has, while Trump wants to tap into the anger voters feel when the GOP makes their vote irrelevant.