Trump Protesters Arrive In Bay Area For State GOP Convention
BURLINGAME (AP) - The Latest on protests against Donald Trump during the GOP candidate's California events (all times local):
1:30 p.m.
Donald Trump is giving Republican power brokers a warning - he'll beat Hillary Clinton with or without them.
Trump tells the California Republican Party convention that the party needs to unify behind him as its nominee. But he adds that even if it doesn't, he thinks he can beat Hillary Clinton.
"Could I win without it?" Trump asks the crowd of powerbrokers and activists. "I think so because they're going to be voting for me" - and not the party.
Trump rarely speaks at state party events, but California is the big prize on June 7, as the primary series wraps up.
1:15 p.m.
Donald Trump is joking about his unorthodox entrance to the California Republican Party convention.
Hundreds of demonstrators ringed the hotel where the Republican front-runner was scheduled to address attendees. The Secret Service led Trump inside through a rear entrance from a nearby freeway.
"Felt like I was crossing the border," Trump quipped during his lunchtime speech.
1 p.m.
Skirmishes are breaking out between protesters turning out at the Burlingame, California, hotel where Donald Trump is speaking at the California GOP convention and Trump supporters.
Adam Harry, a retired aerospace engineer, says he went to the venue to take a look Friday and was confronted by anti-Trump demonstrators who punched him, spit on him and threw his phone to the ground.
The scene appeared to calm somewhat after Trump entered the hotel from a back entrance - avoiding protesters - and took the podium.
12:30 p.m.
Dozens of protesters have broken through steel barricades surrounding the California hotel where Donald Trump will address the state GOP convention.
The protesters are also throwing eggs at police and chanting anti-Trump slogans Friday.
Many other protesters remain on the sidewalk.
Dozens of officers have formed a human chain around the hotel entrance and driveway and are standing shoulder-to-shoulder in riot gear in an attempt to keep demonstrators out of the venue.
Trump entered the convention from an access point behind the hotel, avoiding protesters.
Noon
Donald Trump has picked up two more delegates in Rhode Island, giving him 81 percent of the delegates needed to clinch the nomination and avoid a contested convention.
He needs to win 48 percent of the remaining delegates to secure the nomination by the end of the primaries. He has won a majority of the delegates allocated so far.
Trump won the Rhode Island primary on Tuesday in a landslide. The Rhode Island GOP says Trump got 12 delegates, Ohio Gov. John Kasich got five and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz got two.
The overall AP delegate count:
Trump: 996.
Cruz: 565.
Kasich: 153.
11 a.m.
Several hundred protesters have gathered near a Burlingame, California, hotel where Donald Trump will address the state GOP convention.
A dozen protesters linked arms Friday to block the road in front of the hotel but no one is using the street because police had already closed it to traffic.
The diverse crowd is otherwise carrying signs and banners at the event near San Francisco International Airport.
On Thursday night, Trump supporters and opponents got into confrontations outside a Trump rally in Southern California and raucous protesters damaged police cars.
Previous story below:
Donald Trump, the outsider, is making his case to California's Republican establishment after he kicked off his crucial campaign for the state's presidential primary with a rally marred by confrontations between protesters and his supporters on the streets.
The front-runner and his two rivals pitch their campaigns from the stage and in behind-the-scenes cajoling at the GOP convention outside San Francisco, with Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich appearing Friday and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and his new running mate, Carly Fiorina, up Saturday.
It's a key event in the campaign for the nation's largest GOP primary, June 7, an exercise that usually comes after the party nominees are known but this time looms as a decisive contest that could either clinch the prize for Trump or force him into a contested convention in July.
All three candidates are looking to galvanize supporters, sway undecided party members or poach from rival campaigns at the convention. "It's going to be a free-for-all," predicted the state party vice chairman, Harmeet Dhillon.
That label clearly applied to Trump's Orange County rally Thursday night, which filled the Pacific Amphitheatre to its capacity of about 8,000, with many hundreds more turned away.
Protests that stayed mostly peaceful during the event grew in size and anger after. Police in riot gear and on horseback pushed the crowd back and away from the arena; one Trump supporter had his face bloodied in a scuffle as he tried to drive away. One man jumped on a police car, leaving its front and rear windows smashed and the top dented and other protesters sprayed graffiti on a police car and the venue's marquee.
About 20 people were arrested, said the Orange County Sheriff's Department.
Trump's remaining rivals can't beat him in what's left of the primary season. Their only hope is to deny him a majority of delegates heading into the July convention and wrestle for the prize in multiple ballots there.
But questions persist in the party - nationally and in California - about Trump's electability in the fall and his conservative credentials. So the reception Trump in particular receives from the state's party activists and grassroots organizers will be noteworthy. He rarely speaks to Republican establishment groups and he rails against what he calls a rigged party system that governs the nomination.
The convention crowd defies expectation in a state known as a Democratic fortress. There have been pushes toward moderation, but the group tends toward conservative leanings and favors calls for free markets, tax cuts and shrinking the size of government. It's also socially conservative: The state party's platform defines marriage as between a man and a woman, and wants the Supreme Court's affirmation of abortion rights reversed.
Trump has spoken favorably about Planned Parenthood, which provides abortion services. He has warned against cutting into Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, often targets for conservatives who want to slow government spending.
When Trump earlier this month said transgender people should be able to use whichever bathroom they choose, Cruz's campaign released a statement saying Trump was "no different from politically correct leftist elites." The California platform endorses free markets; Trump has long criticized U.S. trade policy and advocated steep tariffs on Chinese goods.
The California primary will award 172 delegates. Trump now has 994 delegates, Cruz has 566 and Kasich has 153, according to the AP's delegate count. It takes 1,237 to clinch the nomination.
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Follow Michael R. Blood on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MichaelRBloodAP .
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This story has been corrected to show that the Pacific Amphitheatre capacity is about 8,000, not 18,000.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press.
