DeVanney was originally a Marco Rubio supporter and served as a regional state finance chair for the Florida senator’s now-suspended presidential campaign. Mary Ann Meloy, a former official in the Reagan White House and another 14th District delegate candidate who was also originally a Rubio supporter, said she has a “sacred” duty to support a candidate who can win in November. Both believe that the Rubio campaign was easily the best organized in Pennsylvania, and Rubio’s original delegate recruits will comprise a significant bloc of the delegates elected later this month.
“None of the campaigns were organized in Pennsylvania except the Rubio campaign,” DeVanney said. “We knew the rules. So we recruited a lot of Rubio’s [most prominent] supporters to run for delegate. Frankly that was how I ended up on the ballot.” Rubio’s Pennsylvania operation was “ very thoughtful” of whom they recruited—people with relatively high name recognition, for example. “I am still very confident that a large number of people like me, who had Rubio as a first preference, are going to be victorious,” he added.
None of these ex-Rubio supporters would say it explicitly, but the subtext here is pretty obvious: If the Rubio campaign had scooped up many of the most recognizable delegate candidates in each district, then these candidates were probably not likely to shift their support to the likes of Trump. They “believe the same things that Marco Rubio believes, about America and the party and anything else,” said Chris Bravacos, another Pennsylvania Republican operative who chaired Rubio’s campaign in the state. In other words, with a few exceptions, these likely delegates probably consider Trump an unelectable con man who’s destroying the party. Bravacos has a list of all the delegate candidates the Rubio campaign recruited in each district but declined to share it with Slate, lest it affect those candidates’ ongoing campaigns.
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