Un­less there are rule changes, most of Ru­bio’s 166 del­eg­ates will be up for grabs after the first bal­lot. Many of them are ex­pec­ted to vote like Counts, who has no in­ten­tion of sup­port­ing Trump. Bob Ka­bel, a Ru­bio-bound D.C. del­eg­ate, said he would be on the con­ven­tion’s rules com­mit­tee and would like to lower the bar for a pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate to be eli­gible as the nom­in­ee, which could help any can­did­ate hop­ing to take down Trump. A 2012 rule stip­u­lated that a can­did­ate needed the ma­jor­ity of del­eg­ates from at least eight states; Ka­bel said there would be an “act­ive ef­fort” to re­duce that threshold to “as low as one” state. “At a min­im­um, I want those who are re­main­ing in the race to be able to be nom­in­ated,” he ad­ded.

An­oth­er D.C. del­eg­ate for Ru­bio, Rina Shah Bhar­ara, said she didn’t think she could vote for Cruz in part be­cause he “can’t get along with people in Wash­ing­ton,” or Trump, whom she called “ter­rible,” “re­pug­nant,” and “de­ranged.” While she may sup­port Kasich, she doesn’t think he has the “cha­risma” ne­ces­sary to win a gen­er­al elec­tion. And so with few re­main­ing op­tions, Bhar­ara hopes for a new can­did­ate to emerge at the con­ven­tion.

“Those little buzzes about Paul Ry­an or some­body else are just like glim­mers of hope that I hold onto,” she said. “Just any­body else—any­body even out­side the field.”

“The night that Marco dropped out was a very, very bad night,” she ad­ded. “I felt like the end was near for our party.”