Tennessee is among the Super Tuesday states voting on March 1.
Advertisement
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz spent Monday in middle Tennessee.
“We had people lining up at 9:30 a.m.”, said Barrett, who attributed the strong showing to Cruz’s conservative approach to government.
“We wanted to Jemma here to see the beginning of the presidential process and see how things work”, Don Kimminau said.
Cruz spoke earlier in the day in Chattanooga and also campaigned in Brentwood later Monday afternoon. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, jumps off the stage to greet supporters as he campaigns Monday, August 10, 2015, in Franklin, Tenn.
The Cruz campaign believes its path to victory rests on a slow, slog-it-out winning of delegates in states that award them proportionally like these.
The Cruz campaign notes that the seven states’ primaries represent 356 delegates out of the 1,236 required to win the GOP nomination.
No Cruz swing yet epitomizes that post-Iowa mentality like this one, though trips later this summer will take him to far-flung states like Wyoming. “We’re now going to stand out and show the rest of the country that we’re leaders down here”.
Tennessee Republican primary voters gave the nod to Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2008 and former U.S. Sen.
Now, some Republicans say they can sense their new power.
Currently, coal is the source for 39% of the electrical power in the United States. “I feel like we’re at the Iron Bowl”, Cruz told reporters in the Birmingham suburb of Pelham, referring to the yearly showdown between Alabama and Auburn.
In most presidential election years through the 2004 cycle, Alabama held its presidential primaries in June, often long after voters in other states had essentially decided the outcome of the races.
That regional pandering appeared effective – he gained hoops and hollering when cracking Alabama football jokes all day Sunday. The bus tour started right after the first Republican primary debate in Cleveland, which bumped Cruz up to second place with 13 percent of the vote in an NBC News/Survey Monkey poll.
Trey Edwards, an Alabama political consultant who attended the Huntsville event, said he was surprised at the high number of young families who came out to see Sen.
Cruz received several standing ovations as he laid out his platform.
But despite the “Courageous Conservative” stickers pasted onto their t-shirts, Republicans in Alabama said their support remained quite soft. And more than 1,000 people crammed into a town hall in Huntsville to nosh on free ice cream and hear him speak.
And after all, few candidates have even visited, so they can’t know whether the best candidate has yet to arrive. “We’ve got to come together”. “I’m still looking, seeing what’s going to happen”.
On their way to the Jackson Center, Jemma remarked to her parents Don and Teresa that she “thought candidates only went to the big cities”.
Advertisement
“Ted Cruz is just another Republican with no fiscal sense and no idea how to govern effectively”.
