Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz has struck a chord with evangelical voters and surged into the lead in early-voting Iowa, but Donald Trump’s supporters in the Hawkeye State remain as confident as ever.
Iowa voters who line up at Mr. Trump’s sold-out events and activists volunteering on his campaign said Monday that his base remains solid and support will grow when the billionaire businessman launches an aggressive retail politics tour in January.
They also said that Mr. Cruz was understandable given his appeal among the state’s many evangelical voters.
Some of those evangelical voters abandoned retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson to back Mr. Cruz and gave up on the traditional Christian conservatives in the race, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who both won the Iowa caucus in previous cycles but are now viewed by many as unelectable.
“Cruz is the only candidate that the evangelicals have in this state that they feel like actually has a chance of winning, and that’s why they are supporting him,” said Ken Crow, a tea party activist in Iowa who is supporting Mr. Trump.
“He can quote scriptures and he has the best Christian story,” he said of Mr. Cruz, who has put faith front and center on the stump and deployed his preacher father on the campaign trail.
Several Iowans in the Trump camp said they thought the polls were not accurately counting the flood of new voters that Mr. Trump has brought into the process and could overcome the state’s evangelical tilt at the Feb. 1. caucuses.
“Even if he does lose by a little bit [in Iowa], it doesn’t concern me because everybody knows that Iowa is an evangelical state anyway and the candidate with biggest Bible who can quote scriptures wins,” said Mr. Crow.
A series of recent polls have shown Mr. Cruz overtaking Mr. Trump for the lead in Iowa, home to the country’s first nominating contests.
A Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll released Sunday gave Mr. Cruz a 10-point lead over Mr. Trump, 31 percent to 21 percent. That was the third consecutive poll to put Mr. Cruz in front in Iowa.
But a Quinnipiac University poll released Monday showed a neck-and-neck race with Mr. Trump barely edging out Mr. Cruz, 28 percent to 27 percent.
National polls consistently find Mr. Trump is the front-runner with a double-digit lead. A Monmouth University poll released Monday showed Mr. Trump with his largest advantage yet, leading at 41 percent with Mr. Cruz a distant second at 14 percent among likely Republican primary voters.
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“Trump is outside that mold for a lot of those traditional voters but Trump is attracting a lot of people who are not traditional caucus-goers. So I think the polls might be a little skewed,” said Jeff Moorman, who is volunteering on the Trump campaign
He added that Mr. Cruz’s front-runner status in Iowa will bring him the intense scrutiny that Mr. Tump has already survived.
“That’s why the base is solid for Trump,” he said. “And Trump is going to pick up more supporters going forward. He’s barreling down in Iowa more and I know that coming into January Mr. Trump is going to be spending more time in the local communities, getting in front of people and getting out his message.”
Still, Mr. Tump has taken note of Mr. Cruz’s rise and began taking swings at him. Up until recently, Mr. Trump has spared the Texas senator from the insults and taunts he routinely tosses at his rivals.
“We’re doing really well with the evangelicals,” Mr. Trump said at a rally last week in Des Moines, Iowa. “And by the way, I do like Ted Cruz, but not a lot of evangelicals come out of Cuba, in all fairness. It’s true. Not a lot come out. But I like him nevertheless.”
Mr. Cruz’s father escaped Fidel Castro’s Cuba to come to America.
Describing his own faith, Mr. Trump said: “I am an evangelical. I’m a Christian. I’m a Presbyterian.”
On Sunday talk shows, Mr. Trump questioned if Mr. Cruz had the judgment and temperament to serve as president, saying he acted like a “maniac” in the Senate and made enemies with Republican leaders.
Mr. Cruz responded with humor.
“In honor of my friend @realDonaldTrump and good-hearted #Maniacs everywhere,” Mr. Cruz tweeted with a link to a montage featuring the song “Maniac” from the 1983 movie “Flashdance.”
Will Rogers, chairman of the Republican Party in Polk County, Iowa, said the Cruz campaign has made all the right moves but now must keep building momentum or else fade in same manner as retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
“People try to read too much into the tea leaves at this point. You just want to make sure you’ve got the wind in your sails in the last couple weeks before the caucuses,” he said. “Six weeks is a long time here.”
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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