The Extreme Measures Delegates Engaged in to Get Elected

— -- In Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary, Donald Trump wasn’t the only candidate whose ground game helped him win big.

Several of the state’s 54 newly-elected unbound delegates staged their own elaborate campaign operations in the hopes of paving their way to what is expected to be a historic Republican convention in Cleveland in July. Pennsylvania's huge heap of unbound delegates is the biggest in the country. At a contested convention, these 54 people could make or break the nomination process for the next leader of the free world.

Jim Worthington, a Trump supporter and newly-elected delegate from Pennsylvania’s 8th congressional district, said he spent more than $30,000 of his own money on his delegate campaign.

“At no point did I have a budget,” said Worthington, who owns and runs a health club and lifestyle center. “We just kept thinking of things to do to get my name more out there.” Worthington used his company’s marketing department to help him design and print 2,000 lawn signs, 25,000 direct mailers and 50,000 handbills promoting his candidacy.

“We actually had double the amount of signs as a guy running for Congress,” Worthington said. He also scheduled robocalls on Monday night and took out a half-page ad in the local Sunday paper.

Worthington’s interest in being a delegate at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland was partially driven by the memory of his father, who recently passed away. The two always watched national conventions together, starting with the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago on a black-and-white TV. “My dad would have loved Trump and all this craziness,” he said.

Pennsylvania delegate and Trump supporter Andrew Shecktor, from the state’s 11th district, said he spent almost $20,000 of his own money and more than 2,000 hours campaigning to win. Schecktor said his goal was to emphasize his passionate support for Trump and provide voters with information about who other delegate candidates supported. In Pennsylvania, ballots don’t list this information.

“Trump had the support of the people,” Shecktor said. “They just needed to know how to vote.” So he created handbills and a website to explain the delegate process, promote his support for Trump, and list which presidential candidate each delegate supported.

He estimates that he personally handed fliers to 22,500 people, and said that his website and social media reached about 10 million people. “The website that I created and promoted may very likely have been the deciding factor in the election of all the delegates across the state,” Shecktor said. He credits this strategy for his own win, too.

Unbound delegates are free agents who can vote for any candidate to become their party’s nominee, regardless of how their state and districts voted. They will become crucial at the national convention if no candidate reaches the required 1,237 delegates beforehand.

There are total of 71 number of delegates in Pennsylvania. Seventeen of those delegates are now bound to Trump because he won the state popular vote. The remaining 54 are unbound but currently 41 of the unbound delegates will be voting for Trump: 28 delegates who are Trump supporters and 13 delegates who are voting for their districts’ winner, which is Trump. The unbound delegates are at liberty to change their minds at any time ahead of the convention.

For Jim Worthington, the opportunity to participate at the convention is well worth the $30,000 price tag. “I just think my dad would be so excited and proud,” he said.

“It kind of hit me, I’m going to be one of only a couple thousand people out of everyone in the country who has the opportunity to help select the next President of the United States,” he remarked.

ABC News' Lauren Pearle contributed to this report.