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Delegates from covention will be pledged to Trump
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The 1st Congressional District Committee of the Georgia Republican Party will have its district convention from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Dorchester Civic Center, 1804 Islands Highway in Midway.

The convention is a step in the process of selecting who will represent the district at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July.

County conventions held in March selected delegates and alternates, based on 2012 Republican Presidential county vote totals, to the district and state conventions. The Georgia GOP State Convention will be in June in Augusta.

Georgia gets 76 delegates to the RNC, with 42 of those delegates coming from selection by the state’s 14 congressional district committees. In addition to those selected by the district convention, there are 36 at-large delegates elected at the state convention. Two hundred twenty delegates and alternates are registered to attend the district convention Saturday.

The district will convene to elect three RNC delegates and three alternates who will represent the district at the RNC. The cost for the Cleveland convention is projected at close to $4,000 for the average delegate.

Donald Trump won 38.8 percent of the vote in the state, giving him 42 delegates. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, won 23.6 percent of the vote being for 18 delegates. The other 16 delegates belong to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who has dropped out of the race.

Trump won the 1st District with more than 35,000 votes. Cruz had just over 20,000. By virtue of garnering the most votes, Trump is awarded all of the district’s delegates and alternates.

"The 1st District voters made (their) voice heard on March 2 during the SEC Primary that originated in Georgia," said W. John Wood, chairman of the 1st Congressional District Committee of the Republican Party. "We are expecting those that serve as delegates and alternates to honor those votes to Donald Trump."

A term that is being bandied about in the political circles is the possibility of a brokered convention. That possibility is becoming more realistic after Cruz took Wisconsin. Trump, Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich are battling to grab the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination before the July convention.

"A brokered convention is not something new," Wood said. "Ronald Reagan got the nomination in 1980 from a brokered convention. In fact you are going to hear Reagan’s ‘11th Commandment’ quoted a lot, ‘Thou shall not talk ill of other Republicans.’"

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