Republicans brace for more anger as Ted Cruz looks to sweep up Wyoming's delegates

The Texas senator is hoping his ground operation will help him close the gap with the tycoon

Ted Cruz, speaks at the Colorado Republican State Convention, in Colorado Springs (AP)

Ted Cruz is hitting the ground in Wyoming in an effort to secure a near clear sweep of its delegates and close the gap with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.

Republicans in the state are gathering over the weekend to pick the 14 delegates they will send to the party’s summer convention to vote for a presidential nomination.

Party members, rather than ordinary voters, will elect the delegates in a process that mirrors what happened last week in Colorado, which was at the centre of controversy after Mr Cruz out-operated Mr Trump. Mr Trump was so angry that he described the multi-tiered caucus system as “rigged.”

Mr Cruz, who has had his staff working in Wyoming for months, is expected to do well there. Mr Trump, who did not campaign in Colorado, also failed to make any appearances in Wyoming.

“I don’t want to waste millions of dollars going out to Wyoming many months before to wine and dine and to essentially pay off all these people because a lot of it's a pay-off,” Mr Trump told Fox News on Saturday.

“You understand that, they treat them, they take them to dinner, they get them hotels. I mean the whole thing’s a big pay-off, has nothing to do with democracy”

Mr Cruz is due to address state-level delegates in the city of Casper on Saturday. Ed Buchanan, Mr Cruz’s state campaign chairman, said volunteers spread across each of Wyoming’s 23 counties had been tracking the process since last autumn

“We send them letters, call them and to try identify who might want to be at-large delegates,” he told ABC News, adding that nearly 100 volunteers had been part of the ground effort on a weekly basis here.

Since so many Cruz-pledged hopefuls are trying to go to Cleveland, the Cruz campaign is circulating a list of Cruz-preferred delegates to consolidate support for the 14 available delegate slots.

“If you’ve got a clear majority of the delegates and they stick together to these 14, you should get all 14,” said Mr Buchanan.

Mr Trump’s campaign has admitted it expects to do poorly in the Western state. It is instead focussing on upcoming primaries in states such as New York and Pennsylvania, which have more delegates and where the tycoon hopes to perform better.

“Expectations are low here,” said Alan Cobb, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign in Casper. “These narrow party processes don’t favor our campaign.”