(AP Photo/Paul Sancya). Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks to steelworkers in Ashland, Ky., Monday, May 2, 2016.
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Urging voters to pick him over his rival and current GOP front-runner, Donald Trump, presidential candidate Ted Cruz framed the battle to win the IN primary as a choice between good versus evil. On Saturday, he spent a day away from IN – taking his announced running mate Carly Fiorina with him to California for the GOP convention there.
Cruz encountered a handful of hecklers in Marion, Indiana, during a stop at The Mill restaurant.
And Cruz touted his willingness to debate with the man, hitting Trump’s suggestion that he’d pay a supporter’s legal fees for punching a protester in the face this February. Ted Cruz if he hopes to keep front-runner Donald Trump from winning the 1,237 delegates that would give Trump the GOP presidential nomination.
Trump pointed to Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s endorsement of Cruz, noting that it only came after Pence lavished praise on Trump in an Indianapolis radio show appearance.
“I’d like to see the party pull together”, Trump said.
With a pivotal vote in Indiana Tuesday, Cruz is vowing to “go the distance”, whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s primary.
The Democratic race is much closer, with frontrunner Hillary Clinton holding a narrow, four-point lead over Bernie Sanders among likely Democratic voters in IN, the poll finds.
An April 24 letter writer lamented the possible loss of her vote for Donald Trump in a contested convention.
Still, Sanders showed no signs of letting up on Clinton, pointing to differences with the former secretary of state over fundraising, Goldman Sachs speeches, the Iraq war, fracking and the minimum wage. All 11 Trump delegates voted for their own slate, while the other 12 delegates (none of whom supported Trump) voted for the other slate. And they favor Clinton by a almost 18-1 margin.
Five percent of the respondents said they were undecided and 15% said they preferred another candidate. Sanders was making stops in Kentucky, which holds a primary in mid-May, while Clinton moved on to OH, a key general election battleground.
His campaign’s new strategy is to sway superdelegates to his side, but that’s a longshot if he trails Clinton in pledged delegates.
At least 22 of the 27 delegates elected Saturday were included on Trump’s slate of preferred delegates, which could help him avoid losing votes on a second or subsequent ballot at the convention. After Indiana, numerous candidates are expected to make stops in California. He retreated to IN more than a week ago, hoping a win could at least help him deny Trump an outright primary victory and lead to a contested convention.
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Because of Trump’s sizable delegate lead, Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich can not mathematically capture the number of delegates needed to secure the Republican presidential nomination during the first rounding of voting at the Republican National Convention in July. Kasich, meanwhile, told reporters in Pennsylvania and then OR that the deal was a simple matter of “shifting resources”, not the pact that #NeverTrump campaigners hoped for.
