Rubio Wins in Washington
But in Washington, where Republicans are relatively rare and tend to work as lobbyists, lawyers and Capitol Hill staff members, Saturday amounted to what might be the establishment’s last chance to roar back at the angry anti-Washington masses who have dominated the electorate so far. The two so-called establishment candidates, Mr. Rubio and Mr. Kasich, won 37 percent and 36 percent of the vote, with Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz far behind.
Long
lines of men in khakis and women in standard-issue white dresses and
pearls had snaked for hours through the one voting site, the Loews
Madison Hotel downtown. They passed people handing out fliers for Mr.
Rubio, the Florida senator, infants in strollers wearing “All-American
Baby” onesies and the “Stop Trump” desk, where anti-Trump editorials
from the country’s largest newspapers were on offer.
They
also passed Vinnie Roma, 22, a Trump volunteer from Toms River, N.J.,
who wore a “Make America Great Again” hat and stars-and-stripes pants.
(“They roll their eyes,” he said with a shrug.)
After
voting in the presidential race, the Republicans also picked delegates
from among choices including a former White House chief of staff, Josh
Bolten, and several former ambassadors.
Nicholas
Rodman, 29, a staff member of the House of Representatives, wore a
Reagan-Bush ’84 ball cap and voted for Mr. Rubio. “He’s strong on
national security, and he’s pro free-trade,” he said, echoing
longstanding party orthodoxy.
J.
J. Burke, 33, a consultant who works on the websites of Fortune 500
companies, said he preferred Mr. Kasich, the Ohio governor.
“I
relate to him more, and he has legislative experience,” said Mr. Burke,
33, who wore a gingham shirt and blue blazer and joked that he was one
of downtown’s “few young Republicans.”
Registered
Democrats living in Washington outnumber Republicans more than 10 to
one, but Patrick Mara, the executive director of the DC Republican Party,
noted the national party had granted it 19 delegates to the convention,
not an insignificant number considering that all of Florida, the
biggest state voting on Tuesday and many times the size of the capital,
has 99.
As
a result, Mr. Mara said he was surprised candidates did not campaign
here, though he acknowledged, “It’s hard to run here in a public way
when you are spending your whole campaign running away from Washington.”
Wyoming
represented the day’s other prize. Three of the state’s 29 delegates
are unpledged state party officials, and only 12 delegates were
contested on Saturday, with Mr. Cruz, the Texas senator, winning nine of
them. The remaining 14 will be pledged at a state convention on April
16. Officials in Wyoming have begun studying whether to abandon their
complicated voting system, which involves three separate elections, and
move to a primary.
“We don’t see a lot of attention,” explained Tom Wiblemo, executive director of the Wyoming Republican Party.
But
the Wyoming party’s chairman, Matt Micheli, pointed out that Mr. Cruz
had visited in August, hosting a couple of large rallies on opposite
ends of the state, and that the Cruz campaign had remained engaged
throughout the primary season. Donald J. Trump never made it to the
state, Mr. Kasich visited last year and Rubio surrogates held several
events.
Saturday’s
elections actually began on Friday evening, Eastern Time, in Guam,
about 8,000 miles from Washington and on the other side of the
international date line. About 300 Republicans met in a hotel ballroom
there to vote to send nine delegates to the party’s convention in
Cleveland.
The
delegates are not yet officially pledged to any candidate, though one
of them, the territory’s governor, Eddie Calvo, has endorsed Mr. Cruz.
Mr. Cruz’s campaign had dispatched a surrogate on a five-week tour of
the United States territories to win over their delegates, and the
senator also sent Mr. Calvo a birthday cake in August.
On
Saturday, a letter sent by Mr. Cruz to Guam’s Republican Party (“It’s
Guam’s time,” it began) was read on the caucus floor, and the
candidate’s wife, Heidi, called in to the ballroom, according to The Pacific Daily News.
So did Mr. Kasich and Mr. Trump, who told the assembled Guamanians, “I
understand the tourism industry better than anyone else who’s ever run
for president,” and “I thought it was very, very important to call in. I
didn’t want to give it to one of my assistants to do it. It’s very,
very, important if we can get Guam and the delegates. And I will never
forget you people.”
Democrats
voted in the Northern Mariana Islands, a territory about 130 miles
north of Guam. The island, which has seen the arrival of pregnant
Chinese whom the local governor has called “birth tourists,”
has about 50,000 American citizens. As in Guam, they cannot vote in the
general election but can participate in the nominating contests.
Mrs. Clinton won four of the territory’s delegates awarded on Saturday, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont took two.
Though
Washington has only a nonvoting delegate in Congress (“Taxation Without
Representation,” its license plates say), its residents do get to vote
in the general election, as well as during the primary season.
At
one point Saturday, the line outside the Loews Madison curved around
the block, prompting Ben Ginsberg, a prominent lawyer who was national
counsel to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, to joke about “voter
suppression.”
As
he walked to the back of the line, he waved to prominent Washingtonians
he knew by name. But when asked whom he supported, Mr. Ginsberg played
coy, insisting he was less interested in voting for president than for
the delegates themselves.
“I’m voting for my friends,” he said.
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