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| EFE |
Donald Trump continued his march towards the presidential nomination for the Republican Party this Saturday by winning in the Republican caucuses of Idaho and Missouri, and swept the number of delegates at a Republican convention in Michigan.
Trump obtained all the delegates at stake on Saturday, which raises his count to 244, compared to the 24 of the former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley. A candidate needs to get 1,215 delegates to win the Republican nomination.
The next appointment is the Republican party assembly on Sunday in the District of Columbia. Two days later will be Super Tuesday, when 16 states and American Samoa will hold primaries on what will be the biggest voting day of the year, not counting the November elections. Trump is on track to secure the nomination a few days later.
The enormous challenge that Haley faces was evident in Columbia, Missouri, where Republicans gathered in a church to celebrate a caucus.
Seth Christensen took the stage and asked them to vote for Haley. He was not well received.
Another caucus attendee shouted from the audience: "Are you a Republican?"
An organizer calmed the crowd and Christensen finished his speech. Haley won only 37 of the 263 Republicans present in Boone County.
Michigan Republicans, gathered on Saturday at their convention in Grand Rapids, began to assign 39 of the 55 presidential delegates of the Republican Party of the state. Trump won the 39 assigned delegates.
But a considerable part of the party's grassroots force skipped the meeting due to the persistent effects of a months-long dispute over party leadership.
Trump won the Michigan primaries last Tuesday with 68% of the votes, compared to Haley's 27%.
Michigan Republicans were forced to split their delegate allocation in two parts after the Democrats, who control the state government, moved Michigan to the early primary states, violating the rules of the national Republican Party.
Voters lined up in front of a church in Columbia, home of the University of Missouri, before the doors opened for the electoral assemblies. Once inside, they listened to the exhortations of the candidates' supporters.
"Every 100 days we spend a trillion dollars and the money is distributed all over the world. Illegals are crossing the border," Tom Mendenall, a Trump elector in 2016 and 2020, told the crowd. He later added: "You know Donald Trump's stance on many of these issues."
Last year, Idaho lawmakers passed a cost-cutting law that intended to move all state primaries to the same date in May, but the law completely eliminated presidential primaries.
The legislative assembly, led by Republicans, considered the possibility of holding a special session to reinstate the presidential primaries, but failed to reach an agreement on a proposal in time, making the presidential party assemblies the only option.
"I think there has been a lot of confusion because most people don't realize that our legislature actually voted on a defective bill," said Jessie Bryant, who volunteered at a caucus site near downtown Boise. "So the electoral assembly is really the best possible scenario to have the opportunity to vote for a presidential candidate and nominate him for the Republican Party."
One of those voters was John Graves, a fire protection engineer from Boise. He said the caucus was quick and easy, not much different from the usual Idaho Republican primaries. He anticipated that the victory will be for Trump.
"It's a very conservative state, so I think Trump will probably make it quite easily," said Graves. "And I like that."
The Democratic assemblies are until May 23.
The last Republican Party electoral assemblies in Idaho were in 2012, when about 40,000 of the nearly 200,000 registered Republican voters in the state showed up to choose their preferred candidate.