Scrambling to keep his presidential ambitions afloat, Sen. Ted Cruz is using every play in the book to trip up businessman Donald Trump in the Indiana primary next week, but the state’s political veterans say the Texan faces an uphill climb.
Republican analysts credited Mr. Cruz with making all the right moves for a now-or-never fight in the Hoosier State, including striking a deal for rival Ohio Gov. John Kasich to pull out of the state and taking the bold step of announcing months before the convention that Carly Fiorina would be his running mate.
Yet every gambit has come with drawbacks for the Cruz campaign.
Some said the Cruz-Kasich partnership — by which they divvied up states where they would campaign — turned off some voters, and others said his tapping of Mrs. Fiorina smacked of desperation.
The Fiorina announcement was swallowed up Thursday by news that former House Speaker John A. Boehner dubbed Mr. Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh” and said he had “never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”
The comment from a speech at Stanford University dominated cable TV news, even as Mr. Cruz and his allies poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Indiana to tout the Cruz-Fiorina ticket and put their national security message on the airwaves.
“When he calls me ’Lucifer,’ he’s not directing that at me; he’s directing that at you,” Mr. Cruz said at a campaign stop in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
He touted the insult from Mr. Boehner — an unpopular figure among tea party conservatives — as a badge of honor. He said it showed he, not Mr. Trump, was the true outsider in the race.
Mr. Boehner called Mr. Trump a “texting buddy” and golf partner.
“What Boehner is angry at is me standing with the American people,” Mr. Cruz said.
The stakes couldn’t be higher in Indiana for Mr. Cruz. His only path to the nomination is through a contested convention in Cleveland, but Mr. Trump is on track to secure the 1,237 delegates needed before the convention opens in late July.
So to remain viable, Mr. Cruz needs to combine a big win in Indiana with another strong showing in California’s June 7 primary and a series of primaries in other Western states.
“If we win in Indiana, it’s over,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Evansville, also taking aim at Mr. Cruz’s deal-making with Mr. Kasich.
“Cruz looks like a fool,” the New York tycoon said.
Jennifer Hallowell, a Republican political consultant in Indianapolis, said there was room for Mr. Cruz to gain traction but Mr. Trump remained the front-runner in the state.
“Recent polling certainly reflects that, and on the ground there is a sense of that as well,” she said. “The wild card is the impact of this Cruz-Kasich deal. Based on what I’ve seen and heard in the last couple days, a lot of voters are turned off by that.”
The irony is that Kasich supporters have said they still plan to vote for the Ohio governor and some were so turned off by the tag-team effort that they have shifted their support to Mr. Trump.
“The votes will fall into all three pots at the end of the day, so Sen. Cruz really needs to get a decent fraction of Kasich supporters to make this happen for him,” Ms. Hallowell said.
Mr. Cruz’s path to victory in Indiana also could be complicated by the fact that Mrs. Fiorina — who ended her own presidential bid earlier this year — also would appear on the ballot, which could be confusing to voters.
Mr. Trump had a 6-point lead over Mr. Cruz, 39 percent to 33 percent, with Mr. Kasich at 19 percent in a Real Clear Politics average of recent polls in Indiana.
Mr. Cruz said Wednesday that “there is no alliance” with Mr. Kasich, and Mrs. Fiorina dismissed the notion that Mr. Cruz named her as his running mate out of sheer panic.
“He doesn’t do anything in a rush, and he doesn’t do anything in a panic,” she told CNN.
Frank Cannon, president of the American Principles Project, a conservative group, said that in the face of dwindling options, Mr. Cruz made tactically smart moves, including attempting to change the discussion with the Fiorina pick and focusing on electing delegates who could move in his direction if the convention goes to multiple ballots, he said.
Mr. Cannon, though, said the Kasich deal could hurt him.
“I think that anything that smacks of something that is not a straightforward reliance on the voters and on the voter’s preference — in this election cycle particularly — looks like some kind of insider deal-making, which is precisely the thing that voters are reacting against,” he said.
“Look at it from his perspective,” Mr. Cannon said of the Texan. “He spent his entire career burning bridges in a deliberate way to show that he was the guy who was outside of the ’Washington cartel,’ and suddenly there is a guy who makes him look like he is part and parcel of the ’cartel,’ and he is forced into a strategy that makes him play into that narrative because it is his only way of being able to logically survive.”
However, the Cruz-Kasich deal could still pay dividends for the #NeverTrump movement.
Former Lt Gov. John Mutz, who is a Kasich supporter, said he is considering voting for Mr. Cruz in an effort to stop Mr. Trump, but he said it went against the grain.
“I’ve never ran a campaign where my goal was to stop somebody,” he said, adding that he didn’t agree with the “brand of Republicans” represented by either Mr. Trump or Mr. Cruz.
“But Kasich doesn’t have much of a chance to do anything if they don’t stop Trump,” he said.
⦁ David Sherfinski contributed to this report.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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