After Ted Cruz dropped out of the presidential race, his campaign staffers boxed up their mementos and souvenirs as they prepared to shutter the Houston headquarters, and the Texan announced that he would seek reelection to the U.S. Senate.

Yet Cruz’s team didn’t abandon the race for the White House entirely. It still filed a slate of potential presidential delegates for California’s June 7 primary, and continues to monitor delegate selection in states that already voted in the GOP nominating process.

The end result is that Cruz will have more than 550 loyalists attending the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July — a ground force that helps him establish himself as the national leader of the conservative movement, protect the party’s conservative platform from what the senator has called Trump’s “New York values,” and lay the foundation for a potential 2020 presidential bid.

“Anything the Cruz delegates are planning is to keep the engine warm for 2020,” said Rick Tyler, a former Cruz aide.