the latest example of a shifting Massachusetts Republican Party under Chair Jim Lyons, who was elected in January. And the change was not without controversy — Lyons said that at a MassGOP meeting last Tuesday, two state committee members spoke against the rule, and more than a dozen spoke in favor of it before it was approved.

Critics say the winner-takes-all strategy inappropriately protects Trump from a primary challenger like Weld, but according to Lyons, the delegate strategy will push Republicans to focus on gaining ground in local and statewide elections.

"We want to keep the emphasis on trying to protect all of our elected officials in the Statehouse and to trying to add more seats in the Legislature," said Lyons, a former state representative. "Local town committees will beis just go forward and offer an alternative."

But eliminating the proportional delegate process frees up time and money the party would spend on caucuses, according to Trump's 2016 Massachusetts state director Dean Cavaretta.

"Why go through that when we want to generally support the incumbent?" Cavaretta said. "We don't need to go down that road if voters overwhelmingly support that candidate."

Bill Weld was governor of Massachusetts from 1991 to 1997 and the vice presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party in 2016. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

Lyons called the delegate rule change "a locally driven initiative" that came from Massachusetts activists, rather than Washington. But Trump's influence on state committees across the country has been well-documented. The state party also passed a resolution that says the the delegate process is not