WASHINGTON — An embarrassing string of news illustrates how poor organization could cost Donald Trump the Republican presidential nomination to a rival badly outmanoeuvring him.
The latest was an awkward admission Monday: Trump said two of his own children can't vote in next week's New York primary, because they weren't aware of the registration cutoff.
This was after a disastrous weekend. At a meeting in Colorado, he lost all 34 delegates selected to represent the state at the summer nominating convention. In North Dakota, he was crushed in a similar vote days earlier.
Predictably, Trump vented.
He complained of party elites trying to steal the nomination — he argued he's won more primaries, has more votes than anyone and on that basis should be the nominee.
"The people of Colorado had their vote taken away from them," Trump tweeted.
"Biggest story in politics. This will not be allowed!"
His blustery tweets notwithstanding, Trump's acknowledged his predicament. He's rejigged his team, to bring in people with better knowledge of party procedures.
His rag-tag outfit of outsiders was caught off-guard by the complex scenario now unfolding: this historically tight nomination fight could be decided by a multi-ballot convention, the first since 1952, requiring an organizational ability to identify, promote and retain loyal delegates.
Trump's weekend performance didn't bode well.
Neither Colorado or North Dakota had primaries — they did have district- and state-level conventions, which is the kind of contest that will pick the nominee.
His rival Ted Cruz spent months organizing for these. Loyalists of the Texas senator flooded local meetings to ensure friendly faces got sent to the convention.
One Colorado participant recalled an initial meeting in her local precinct last month where she counted about 36 Cruz supporters and six for Trump.
It's not just the quantity, she said — but the quality of Cruz's team.
"The organization for months has been on the Cruz side," said Laura Carno, a conservative author and Colorado campaign organizer who supported Cruz.
"These are the people I've worked with in previous campaigns who are good. ... (Cruz) snapped up the good, experienced, well-known, connected people. ... Connected as in, this isn't their first delegate rodeo."
She got a message from Cruz reminding her to attend her initial precinct meeting. Then at the state gathering last weekend, she estimated 90 per cent of attendees supported Cruz.
The senator's team handed out orange T-shirts — coincidentally, the colour of the beloved Denver Broncos. Carno got a text message explaining which of the 400-plus names on the ballot were Cruz supporters.
Trump's campaign, meanwhile, complained about names missing on the ballot for Trump delegates. According to news reports, that's because they failed to pay the necessary fee.
You can't necessarily blame Trump's state campaign manager — he'd just been hired. His predecessor was fired a few days earlier.
There's reportedly been infighting amid the Trump team shakeup.
The most senior addition is a Washington lobbyist who first worked on a presidential campaign in 1976, when Ronald Reagan challenged sitting president Gerald Ford.
Paul Manafort concedes his new boss needed to switch gears.
"Yes, there's a transition. It's a natural transition," Manafort told NBC's "Meet The Press."
"Trump was doing very well on a model that made sense. But now as the campaign's gotten to the end stages, a more traditional campaign has to take place. Trump recognizes that."
The biggest risk for Trump won't unfold on the convention floor. It's happening now as states pick delegates.
Trump could enter the convention with some delegates plotting to betray him.
The way it works in U.S. primaries is voters pick how many delegates each candidate gets. But grassroots meetings choose the delegates themselves.
If he keeps putting up performances like in Colorado, he may have to deal with the dreaded Trojan-horse delegate.
These are people who'd turn on him at the earliest available opportunity, on the second or third ballot, depending on their own state rules about when they're freed to vote as they please.
Trump knows he'll have to protect his back — from the metaphorical knives of his own delegates.
"I win a state in votes and then get non-representative delegates because they are offered all sorts of goodies by Cruz campaign," he tweeted.
"Bad system!"
There's one way Trump can avoid all this.
He can win on the first ballot with a clear majority of 1,237 delegates. That requires dominating New York on April 19 and Pennsylvania and Maryland on April 26, then outperforming expectations in California and Montana in June.
