Trump Wins in Indiana, Setting Path to GOP Nod as Cruz Exits Race
ByCarrie Dann | NBC
Donald Trump has won the Indiana Republican presidential primary, crushing the hopes of GOP foes who waged a frantic campaign to halt his march to the party’s nomination.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump’s chief rival, suspended his presidential campaign hours after Trump was declared the winner, telling supporters “we left it all on the field in Indiana.”
“The voters chose another path. And so with a heavy heart, but with boundless optimism for the long-term future of our nation, we are suspending our campaign,” he said.
The win and Cruz’s exit sets Trump on a likely path to secure the 1,237 delegates necessary to secure his party’s nomination before the convention in Cleveland this summer. Trump is poised to easily clear the decisive threshold that Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich pledged to block from his reach.
In a memo earlier Tuesday, Kasich’s campaign manager said that the Ohio governor would fight on in the 2016 race. But he lags even farther behind Cruz in the delegate count and is mathematically eliminated from capturing a majority of delegates.
The Indiana contest between the Democrats remains too close to call.
But frontrunner Hillary Clinton leads rival Bernie Sanders by a significant number of total votes and delegates nationwide, and the results of Indiana’s primary are not expected to change her path to the Democratic nomination. Sanders has pledged to compete until the final primary contests in June.
Trump’s victory in Indiana was particularly stinging for Cruz, who employed a series of unorthodox campaign tactics in a last-minute effort to derail Trump’s chances in the Midwestern state.
Together, pro-Cruz and anti-Trump forces spent more than $6 million on television advertising in the Hoosier State in the effort to stall Trump’s march towards the Republican nomination. Cruz and Kasich announced an alliance last month to maximize opposition to Trump in remaining primary states, a strategy which backfired badly among Republican voters skeptical of a plan that Trump branded as “collusion.”
In an unusual move, Cruz announced that former HP chief Carly Fiorina would be his running mate if he captures the GOP nod — despite being mathematically eliminated from getting a majority of Republican delegates at all.
And in a fiery press conference Tuesday, a visibly upset Cruz derided Trump as “a pathological liar,” a “narcissist” and a “serial philanderer” whose electoral success to date has led the country “staring at the abyss.”
“Donald Trump laughs at the people of this state, laughs, bullies, attacks, insults,” he said in remarks responding to Trump’s unsubstantiated theory that Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. “I don’t believe that’s America.”
Trump took a less-than-conciliatory tone when he responded to Cruz’s charges on Twitter Tuesday evening, calling his rival “wacko.”
Trump’s ‘very good’ night: ‘I consider myself the presumptive nominee’
NEW YORK — Donald Trump took another step toward clinching the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday, easily sweeping Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island and Connecticut in the latest round of GOP primaries.
But Trump’s victories, while commanding, did not bring an end to the Republican contest. Though the real estate mogul and former reality television star was expected to take home the majority of the 172 delegates at stake in Tuesday’s voting, adding to his already sizable lead, Pennsylvania’s delegate rules stopped Trump from making a clean sweep.
While Trump won Pennsylvania’s statewide vote, clinching 17 of the state’s 71 delegates, another 54 were officially “unbound,” meaning they can make their own decision about which candidate to support at the party’s convention in July in Cleveland. That technicality gave a glimmer of hope to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who are trying to stop Trump from getting the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination before the convention.
Still, Trump characterized his wins Tuesday as proof of his unstoppable momentum. Speaking to reporters at his election night event at Trump Tower, the GOP frontrunner said he considered the race “effectively over” because Cruz and Kasich “cannot win.”
“I consider myself the presumptive nominee,” Trump said. “If you look honestly, Sen. Cruz and Gov. Kasich should really get out the race… They should get out of the race, and we should heal the Republican Party.”
Although Trump now leads Cruz by more than 300 delegates, neither the Texas senator nor Kasich seem interested in ending their quest for the White House. The contest now shifts to Indiana, a state that could make or break the #NeverTrump movement.
There, Trump narrowly leads Cruz in a state that is viewed as friendly territory for the Texas senator. And on Tuesday night, Cruz took his campaign to the New Castle Fieldhouse, the legendary home of the Indiana Hoosiers basketball team, where he cast himself as an underdog unwilling to give up the fight.
“Tonight, this campaign moves back toward favorable terrain,” Cruz declared. “There is nothing Hoosiers cannot do.”
When Trump heads to Indiana on Wednesday, he will attempt to one-up Cruz in terms of basketball pandering. He plans to campaign with former Hoosiers coach Bobby Knight, a beloved sports figure in the state who endorsed Trump several months ago.
But Trump will first make a stop in Washington, D.C., where he’s scheduled to deliver a foreign policy speech — the first of several policy speeches he has promised to make as he attempts to transition from a primary to a general election candidate.
The candidate declined to go into specifics of what exactly he would talk about Wednesday. But he did reject the idea that he will tone down his rhetoric — pushing back on his convention manager Paul Manafort’s comments to members of the Republican National Committee last week that suggested Trump is merely playing “a part” and would embrace a more “presidential” tone in the coming weeks.
“I am me. I am not playing a part,” Trump said Tuesday night, adding that he had received dozens of messages from supporters saying, “Please don’t change, please don’t change.” “If you have a football team, and you are winning… Why would I change?” he said.
Trump hits 50 percent in national GOP poll for the first time
While Republican frontrunner Donald Trump still needs more than 300 delegates to reach 1,237 — the magic number needed to secure the GOP presidential nomination — he has finally reached a key milestone in his bid for the White House: support from half of the country’s likely Republican voters.
According to a new NBC News/SurveyMonkey national tracking poll released Tuesday, 50 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they support the real estate mogul’s candidacy, compared to the 26 percent who support Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and the 17 percent who are backing Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Trump’s double-digit lead over his GOP rivals is one reason Cruz and Kasich banded together this week in an effort to block the brash billionaire from winning the GOP nomination.
Excluding independents, Trump now enjoys 49 percent support among Republican voters, up six points from last week, when the same poll was conducted prior to his resounding primary victory in New York.
Trump nearly reached 50 percent in a CNN/ORC poll conducted in February, when he led Florida Sen. Marco Rubio by 33 points (49 percent to 16 percent) among Republican and Republican-leaning voters.
Crossing the 50 percent threshold is important for Trump, who has hovered in mid-to-high-40 percent range in recent weeks — leading some to speculate that the White House hopeful had hit his ceiling with GOP voters.
In a statement blasting the Cruz-Kasich pact Monday, Trump complained that he “would be receiving in excess of 60% of the vote except for the fact that there were so many candidates” running against him.
On the Democratic side, frontrunner Hillary Clinton is ahead of Bernie Sanders nationally, but her lead has narrowed to just 2 points, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Monday shows.
According to the survey, the former secretary of state has the support of 50 percent of likely Democratic primary voters, while Sanders has the support of 48 percent. In the same poll conducted last month, Clinton held a 9-point lead over the Vermont senator.
Heading into Tuesday’s primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, recent polls show Trump and Clinton leading in all five states — where wins would put each candidate closer to clinching their respective party’s nomination.
FEC report shows Trump, Clinton have huge spending disparity
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have become their parties’ presidential front-runners with diametrically opposed campaign organizations. Trump has been getting by with an unconventional operation and very little investment in technology or polling or staff — though he has recently hired some seasoned political operatives to avoid getting outfoxed by Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) at a possibly contested Republican National Convention.
And Clinton’s campaign organization could not be more different, an analysis of Federal Election Commission (FEC) spending data by The Hill reveals. The Democratic front-runner relies on an army of consultants, has a payroll more than four times the size of Trump’s and has put many millions of dollars more toward expenses traditionally associated with leading presidential campaigns.
Side-by-side, the contrasts between the Trump and Clinton campaign operations are stunning.
Aided by an estimated $2 billion in free airtime from media coverage, Trump’s campaign spent just $33.4 million through the end of February, $24 million of which Trump loaned himself. Clinton’s campaign, on the other hand, spent $129 million through the same period.
During the month of February, Clinton had 783 employees on her payroll, and Trump had 139.
Clinton employs a roster of the biggest names in Democratic politics, including campaign chairman John Podesta; foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan; press liaisons Brian Fallon and Jennifer Palmieri; and President Obama’s longtime chief pollster, Joel Benenson.
Trump, by contrast, employs a team of previously little-known operatives led by his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who has no experience running presidential campaigns and used to work for Americans for Prosperity.
That difference shows up in the bottom line, where Clinton’s spending on her staff during February alone — the most recent figures provided by the FEC — was $2.9 million, nearly as much as Trump has spent on staff since he entered the race in June.
The press teams, too, reflect the overall contrast between the campaigns.
Fallon, Clinton’s press secretary, was previously a spokesman for Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and former Attorney General Eric Holder, and under Fallon is a team experienced in politics.
Trump’s press operation revolves largely around one woman: Hope Hicks, a former Ralph Lauren model who arrived with only a few years of experience in corporate PR. The billionaire’s most visible on-air spokeswoman is Katrina Pierson, a Texas Tea Party activist with a penchant for controversial statements and little experience in professional politics.
“If you’re not going to have many people, you need to have really good people,” said Stuart Stevens, chief strategist for 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. “And Trump has hired, until recently, a bunch of people who would never have been hired to do what they’re doing by a campaign that was sane.”
But Stevens says Trump’s recent move to hire more experienced staffers is an encouraging sign for supporters, as the race appears likely to be decided by a battle for delegates at the party’s July convention in Cleveland.
The hire of GOP powerhouse Paul Manafort as convention manager drew wide praise, and Stevens described the operative as a “big, big talent.” A veteran of Republican campaigns going back to his work for President Gerald Ford at the contested 1976 GOP convention, Manafort, in an appearance Sunday on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” described his appointment as “a natural transition” for the campaign.
“Trump was doing very well on a model that made sense, but now, as the campaign has gotten to the end stages, a more traditional campaign has to take place,” Manafort said.
But Trump’s shift comes late in the process and weeks after Cruz and his nationwide ground operation began outflanking Trump’s team by wooing delegates at conventions in North Dakota and Colorado.
If Trump is the nominee, he’ll also need to catch up to Clinton on technology and data if he is to optimize his general election chances.
The Hill’s comparison of Trump’s and Clinton’s spending on technology reveals that Clinton is running a campaign that builds on Obama’s legacy of investing in tech, while Trump’s operation is a shoestring affair.
Both candidates outsource their tech spending, but Trump is using lesser-known firms.
Trump paid more than $500,000 to Giles-Parscale, a San Antonio-based company that, according to its website, has more experience working for restaurants and real estate firms than for political campaigns.
While Trump spent just $1.1 million on technology and data, Clinton’s campaign spent close to $5 million through the end of February, with that money going to cloud computing resources and consultants who help clients deal with marketing data, suggesting a robust analytics and voter targeting operation.
On just about every other category of spending, Trump has invested significantly less than Clinton.
Using his tabloid instincts, Trump has exploited free media coverage and spent less than a third of what Clinton has on advertising. He’s also been relying on his instincts for his message, spending just $270,000 on research and polling, compared with Clinton’s $3.8 million.
And a look through the two campaigns’ rental bills suggests that Clinton has a much larger ground game. She has offices in 28 states, whereas Trump’s campaign has had a presence, as well as many fewer offices, in 15 states. More than half of Trump’s rental payments have been going to Trump-owned properties, including Trump Tower in New York, which houses the campaign’s headquarters. There are only a few categories of spending in which Trump rivals Clinton. One is on private security — each candidate has spent roughly $260,000 on security services — though Trump’s force has dealt with protesters in sometimes-controversial ways.
Another is on private air travel, each spending more than $3 million. Because Trump rides on his own jet, all of the billionaire’s expenditures on private air travel have been recycled back into the aviation company he owns, Tag Air, Inc. The only category in which Trump’s campaign spending exceeds Clinton’s is on merchandise. Trump has spent $3.3 million to Clinton’s $1.3 million, and about a third of Trump’s appears to have been on his “Make America Great Again” baseball caps, according to the FEC reports. Veteran Democratic campaign strategist Joe Trippi said Clinton’s much heavier early investment in all aspects of her campaign would give her a “tremendous” general election edge against Trump.
“Everything that she’s built is a huge, huge advantage over a Trump candidacy, because he has no data,” Trippi told The Hill. “He’s got whatever data the RNC [Republican National Committee] has, assuming he’s the nominee. And he’s got to put the fundraising together.” While Trump has made no effort to court the GOP donor class so far and has made his self-funding a point of pride in his campaign, he has left himself open to the possibility of accepting money from donors for a general election that will likely cost each candidate more than $1 billion. Lewandowski declined to comment for this story. But Trippi, asked to characterize the Trump campaign operation from what he knows, said: “Up to now, it’s a guy on a surfboard riding a wave. … The problem is if the wave starts to break up.”
Trump falters in Wisconsin as Cruz wins big
By Holly Bailey
NEW YORK—Texas Sen. Ted Cruz soundly defeated Donald Trump in Wisconsin’s Republican presidential primary Tuesday, winning close to 50 percent of the vote in a three-man contest and potentially giving a burst of new momentum to efforts to stop the real estate mogul from clinching the GOP nomination. The outcome appeared to increase the odds of a contested convention this summer.
“Tonight is a turning point. It is a rallying cry,“ Cruz declared at his election night in Milwaukee. “We have a choice, a real choice.”
But it was too soon to tell whether Cruz’s victory was a sign that the #NeverTrump movement is truly gaining steam or if it was merely a bump in the road for Trump, who has spent the last several days trying to regain momentum after a series of self-inflicted wounds to his campaign.
While exit polls showed Trump won among moderates and preliminary results showed him doing well in rural parts of the state—where he had been expected to do best—there were some troubling signs for the real estate mogul’s campaign. Among them were Cruz’s decisive win among women and suburban voters—two constituencies that Trump has struggled to win so far.
Those two voting blocs could be pivotal as the race shifts toward Northeastern states such as New York, which is considered favorable terrain for Trump but where Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a distant third in Wisconsin, are looking to peel off as many delegates as possible to stop him from winning the nomination outright.
Aided by an endorsement from Gov. Scott Walker, Cruz easily won a key GOP stronghold in Wisconsin—the suburbs of Milwaukee, home to college-educated, middle-class Republicans. The loss underscores the difficulty Trump has had winning over suburban Republicans in the contest so far—including in places like Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, states he easily won overall but where he lost in the suburbs of major cities.
That’s a worrying trend for Trump in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maryland, where the Republican electorate is largely suburban and where Trump needs to win to avoid a floor fight at the convention.
While initial results suggested Cruz would win most of Wisconsin’s 42 delegates, Trump still leads the Texas senator in the delegate race by at least 200 delegates. But another hint of trouble came in the exit polls, which found 58 percent of those who voted were “concerned” or “scared” about the prospect of Trump winning the presidency.
The numbers come as Trump has tried to position himself as the eventual GOP nominee, bragging that he can be a unifying force in the party even as he struggled with discipline in what has been one of the toughest weeks of his candidacy so far, marred by political missteps that unquestionably hurt his campaign in Wisconsin.
Among them were Trump’s fumbling answers on abortion—including his call for “punishment” for women who have one illegally, which he later walked back—and his re-tweet of a supporter who had posted an unflattering photo of Cruz’s wife, Heidi. Trump also faced criticism for his defense of his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who has been charged with simple battery for allegedly grabbinga female reporter during a campaign event last month.
Cruz quickly sought to take advantage of Trump’s flubs—holding several events in recent days to directly appeal to female voters, who polls suggest have been alienated by Trump’s behavior and rhetoric. On Monday, Cruz held a campaign event with Fox News’s Megyn Kelly, whom Trump has repeatedly attacked, where he suggested his rival has a problem with “strong women”—a phrase he repeated during his victory speech Tuesday night.
It’s a phrase Cruz is likely to employ again as the race shifts toward Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states like New York and Pennsylvania, where women make up a major part of the Republican electorate. If the real estate mogul can’t win those states outright, his path to win the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination grows ever more difficult.
Trump, who is scheduled to kick off his New York campaign with a rally in Long Island on Wednesday, is still trying to unite the party behind his bid and cast himself as a more serious candidate. In recent days, he’s held smaller rallies where he tried to project a calmerpresence and resisted engaging with protesters. On Tuesday, his campaign told the Washington Post he would deliver a series of policy speeches in coming weeks as he looks toward the general election.
Still, Trump couldn’t resist lashing out on Wednesday, portraying his share of the vote, about a third, based on incomplete returns, as a victory against his critics. The statement, attributed to his “campaign” and not the candidate personally, railed against “Lyin’ Ted Cruz” and accused the senator of illegally coordinating with super PACs “who totally control him.”
“Donald J. Trump withstood the onslaught of the establishment yet again,” the statement said. “Ted Cruz is worse than a puppet–he is a Trojan horse, being used by the party bosses attempting to steal the nomination from Mr. Trump.”