Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump thanks supporters after speaking at a Get Out The Vote rally at Winthrop University on February 23, 2024 in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
Win at Mcnamee | Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump continued his march toward the GOP nomination Saturday, winning caucuses in Idaho and Missouri and sweeping the delegate haul at a party convention in Michigan.
Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador who was his last primary rival, is still looking for her first win of the election year.
The next event on the Republican calendar is Sunday in the District of Columbia. Two days later is Super Tuesday, when 16 states will hold primaries in what will be the biggest voting day of the year outside of the November election. Trump is on track to lock up the nomination days later.
The steep odds facing Haley were on display in Columbia, Missouri, where Republicans gathered at a church to caucus.
Seth Christensen stood on stage and called for them to vote for Haley. He was not well received.
Another caucusgoer shouted from the audience: “Are you a Republican?”
An organizer quieted the crowd and Christensen finished his speech. Haley won just 37 of the 263 Republicans who attended in Boone County.
Michigan
Michigan Republicans at their convention in Grand Rapids began allocating 39 of the state’s 55 GOP presidential delegates. Trump won all 39 allocated delegates.
But a large part of the party’s grassroots force skipped the gathering due to the lingering effects of a month-long dispute over the party’s leadership.
Trump easily won the Michigan primary this past Tuesday with 68% of the vote compared to Haley’s 27%.
Michigan Republicans were forced to split their delegate allocation in two after Democrats, who control state government, moved Michigan to the first primary states, in violation of national Republican Party rules.
Missouri
Voters line up outside a church in Columbia, home of the University of Missouri, before the doors open for the caucuses. When they went inside, they heard the calls of supporters of the candidates.
“Every 100 days, we spend $1 trillion, with money that goes all over the world. Illegals run across the border,” Tom Mendenall, an elector for Trump in 2016 and 2020, told the crowd. He later added: “You know where Donald Trump stands on a lot of these issues.”
Christensen, a 31-year-old from Columbia who came to the caucus with his wife and three children ages 7, 5, and 2, then urged Republicans to go in a new direction.
“I don’t need to hear about Mr. Trump’s dalliances with people of bad character, and neither do my children,” Christensen told the room. “And if we put that guy in office, that’s what we’re going to hear all the time. And I’m through with it.”
Supporters moved quickly to one side of the room or the other, depending on whether they favored Trump or Haley. There was little discussion between the caucusgoers after they chose sides.
This year is the first test of the new system, which is run almost entirely by volunteers on the Republican side.
The caucuses were organized after GOP Gov. Mike Parson a 2022 law that, among other things, canceled the planned March 12 presidential primary.
Lawmakers failed to restore the primary despite calls to do so by both state Republican and Democratic party leaders. Democrats will hold a party-run primary on March 23.
Trump won twice under Missouri’s old presidential primary system.
Idaho
Last year, Idaho lawmakers passed a cost-cutting law intended to move all state primaries to the same date in May. But the bill inadvertently eliminated presidential primaries entirely.
The Republican-led Legislature considered holding a special session to restore presidential primaries but failed to agree on a measure in time, leaving both parties in presidential caucuses as the only option.
“I think there was a lot of confusion because most people didn’t realize that our Legislature actually voted on a flawed bill,” said Jessie Bryant, who volunteers at a caucus site near downtown Boise. “So the caucus is really the best case scenario to actually get a chance to vote for a presidential candidate and nominate them for the GOP.”
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 Idaho’s typical Republican primary. He expects the win to go to Trump.
“This is a very conservative state, so I would think that Trump would probably take it easy,” Graves said. “And I like that.”
The Democratic caucuses aren’t until May 23.
The last GOP caucuses in Idaho were in 2012, when about 40,000 of the state’s nearly 200,000 registered Republican voters showed up to choose their preferred candidate.
