When Texas senator and Republican presidential aspirant Ted Cruz arrived in the Bronx neighbourhood in New York City on Wednesday to campaign for the upcoming primaries in the state, he was essentially going from one ideological territory to another.
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“I could never vote for Trump or Cruz”, said Allen, executive director of the Amherst IDA.
Voters won’t get that kind of help in Pennsylvania’s primary April 26. “We think the 26th will go a long way to resetting the narrative”.
Of the 34 delegates Cruz won, only 30 are technically pledged to his campaign; four are party officials who are unpledged but have promised to support Cruz, and the campaign placed them on its slate.
Trump is also expanding veteran operative Paul Manafort’s role in his campaign amid the increasingly likelihood of a contested Republican convention. The hostility Cruz encountered should favour Trump, whose stomping ground NY is, even though the state itself is a write-off for Republicans in the presidential election. Both men saw their races downgraded from “Leans Republican” to “Toss-up” on the Center for Politics’ scale. Ted Cruz (R-TX) can win majorities of delegates in their respective parties, but they can stop Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump from sealing the deal. He dominates in the rural Central Valley’s dozen or so congressional districts – ironically so, since the region’s Republicans have been among Cruz’s most vocal critics in Washington.
“Everyone understands that the values in New York City are socially liberal or pro-abortion or pro-gay marriage”, Cruz said then. Trump will need to win a majority of support in each district – or keep his opponents from reaching the 20% threshold – to keep all the delegates to himself.
Jim Merrill, a senior Rubio adviser, did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment for this article but has said that as a delegate to the convention he remains “100 percent loyal” to the senator. “Staying above 50% is important”.
“The ages 14 to 24 are the most formative years for political leanings, according to hundreds of thousands of survey responses…This idea isn’t so different from what marketers have learned: They often focus on making pitches to the young because older people have already developed brand loyalties”, the Times’ Toni Monkovic wrote last month.
In the meantime, Trump is re-focusing his efforts on New York’s April 19 primary, where early opinion surveys show him with a commanding lead. The crucial question is: How are delegates going to use their power?
It seems, though, that the Trump campaign didn’t carefully consider the importance of locking in delegates until very recently. “We looked at people that had run and won in the past”.
First, the Lincoln Caucus would work with the rules committee to get rid of any party bylaws that inhibit delegate flexibility at the convention.
Thompson, a longtime Colorado conservative activist, first met Cruz in 2011, just days after he launched his upstart Texas Senate campaign when he visited Colorado to address a retreat of conservative activists. She backed Cruz after feuding with Trump, a contributor to her gubernatorial runs, over his campaign tactics and proposals including a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country. “The problem for the Republican brand is that a third straight election in which the young vote decisively for Democrats – even if the G.O.P. wins this November – could imprint negative perceptions that last decades”.
Yet support for Trump varies widely across the state, suggesting Ted Cruz – and perhaps John Kasich – could dilute a strong overall showing by the GOP front-runner and divide the state’s massive delegate haul.
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Mann says he’s heard from all three campaigns, which are focusing on volunteer lists, identifying local chairs and delegate selection. The awarding of delegates is based instead on individual results from each of the state’s 27 congressional districts, and Kasich’s strategy is to target districts where Trump may be vulnerable.
