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Cruz Cedes OR, NM Primaries to Kasich; Focuses on Indiana (UPDATE: Trump Responds)
Jeff Roe, Cruz for President’s campaign manager released the following statement late Sunday:
Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans. Not only would Trump get blown out by Clinton or Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation. To ensure that we nominate a Republican who can unify the Republican Party and win in November, our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Gov. Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that the allies of both campaigns would follow our lead. In other states holding their elections for the remainder of the primary season, our campaign will continue to compete vigorously to win.
Soon after Cruz made his announcement, Kasich for President Campaign Manager John Weaver released this statement:
Donald Trump doesn’t have the support of a majority of Republicans – not even close, but he currently does have almost half the delegates because he’s benefited from the existing primary system. Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the Party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee. We believe that will be John Kasich, who is the only candidate who can defeat Secretary Clinton and preserve our GOP majority in the Congress.
Due to the fact that the Indiana primary is winner-take-all statewide and by congressional district, keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1237 bound delegates before Cleveland. We are very comfortable with our delegate position in Indiana already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaign’s resources West and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana.
In turn, we will focus our time and resources in New Mexico and Oregon, both areas that are structurally similar to the Northeast politically, where Gov. Kasich is performing well. We would expect independent third-party groups to do the same and honor the commitments made by the Cruz and Kasich campaigns.
We expect to compete with both the Trump and Cruz campaigns in the remaining primary states.
Update: Donald Trump has issued a response.
Published in GeneralIt is sad that two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for ten months in order to try and stop that person from getting the Republican nomination.
Senator Cruz has done very poorly and after his New York performance, which was a total disaster, he is in free fall and as everyone has seen, he does not react well under pressure. Also, approximately 80% of the Republican Party is against him. Governor Kasich, who has only won 1 state out of 41, in other words, he is 1 for 41 and he is not even doing as well as other candidates who could have stubbornly stayed in the race like him but chose not to do so. Marco Rubio, as an example, has more delegates than Kasich and yet suspended his campaign one month ago. Others, likewise, have done much better than Kasich, who would get slaughtered by Hillary Clinton once the negative ads against him begin. 85% of Republican voters are against Kasich.
Collusion is often illegal in many other industries and yet these two Washington insiders have had to revert to collusion in order to stay alive. They are mathematically dead and this act only shows, as puppets of donors and special interests, how truly weak they and their campaigns are. I have brought millions of voters into the Republican primary system and have received many millions of votes more than Cruz or Kasich. Additionally, I am far ahead of both candidates with delegates and would be receiving in excess of 60% of the vote except for the fact that there were so many candidates running against me.
Because of me, everyone now sees that the Republican primary system is totally rigged. When two candidates who have no path to victory get together to stop a candidate who is expanding the party by millions of voters, (all of whom will drop out if I am not in the race) it is yet another example of everything that is wrong in Washington and our political system. This horrible act of desperation, from two campaigns who have totally failed, makes me even more determined, for the good of the Republican Party and our country, to prevail!
By the way, those Florida results are the reason Kasich decided to stay in. He knew by reading those results that if he and Rubio dropped out, the game was over.
He is not harming Cruz, he is keeping him alive.
Secret communication would count as coordinating. Public statements are clearly free speech.
I think his politics are much more akin to the northeast ultra progressive wing of the Republican party.
I doubt he plays well in Missouri or Indiana.
I made this point in a post a while ago. The talk about Kasich getting out “for the good of the party” makes no sense. It’s either delusional or bravado to assume Kasich voters just automatically prefer Cruz to Trump.
This is not true.
I looked at the polls from Wisconsin and the final results very, very carefully, and followed local coverage from people who knew what was going on. The anti-Trump vote coalesced. A meaningful percentage of Kasich voters told pollsters they’d consider moving to Cruz — and in the event a meaningful number of them did. That is how Cruz performed so far above his average.
Presented with a case that Cruz was the candidate to beat Trump, a significant number of undecideds and Kasich voters moved to him. That’s not speculation, that’s fact.
Something similar happened in Ohio, where a meaningful number of Rubio voters moved to Kasich after Rubio dropped an open hint similar to what Kasich has done here.
That flexibility might not be the case everywhere. But it has been very clearly the case in at least two Midwestern states. And the main thing Cruz needs right now is for it to be true in one more Midwestern state: Indiana.
Leigh, you are fantastic. Your analysis is spot on.
They are focusing on denying Trump 1237 – not trying to maximize their personal delegate totals – neither can win on the first ballot, but they don’t want to split the #nevertrump vote.
This may work, I have my doubts. But what if it doesn’t work and Trump wins Indiana (after blowing Cruz out in fantastic Tuesday)? Will the Never Trump Twins take their show to California with its district based delegate allocation system? Will they divide up the state based on district-level polls which will probably not be that accurate? Cruz gets Modesto, Kasich gets Stockton? Who gets South Central LA? Even if you could figure out who has a better chance of winning Santa Cruz, how does one Never Trump Twin put up ads in San Francisco without it being seen in the other’s territory? It’s all about ground game, I guess.
Kasich won Ohio because he was the governor. But more importantly, Ohio would have gone Trump without Kasich. You can’t pick Kasich in one state and Cruz in another. The coalescing scenario assumes EITHER Cruz or Kasich dropped out. In each case, some states move to the remaining non-Trump candidate, but some states move to Trump (e.g. Ohio when Kasich drops out).
It does not matter if the anti-Trump vote coalesces. That’s what Florida showed Kasich and Cruz. It can work in a state or two, such as Wisconsin. But it cannot work generally, because for every state that moves Cruz, another moves Trump with Kasich out. And for every state that moves Kasich, another moves Trump with Cruz out.
What matters is if the non-Trump vote is high enough to get to 50%. Wisconsin is the best case. It’s like Florida is for Trump, only with Cruz on top. And in WI, even Cruz did not hit 50%, but he likely would have hit 50% in a 2 person race.
Problem is, that dynamic works AGAINST Cruz/Kasich and for Trump in most states. Trump’s percentage of the vote was high enough (above 40%) in each of NV, AL, MA, LA, HI, MS, FL, MO, NC and AZ to mean that he just needed to pull a small chunk from the departing candidate to hit 50%.
He was probably also close enough in GA, TN, IL, OH and MI to do it as well.
Sure, the surviving candidate could have picked off one or two of those. But most would tip Trump. That’s because he is starting from a higher place in all of those states. And as candidates drop out, he needs to pull off only a small percentage of them.
To give you an example, even if everyone except Cruz dropped out of FL and they went one on one, Trump would only have needed to grab 1 out of every 13 voters from the remaining voters to win a majority. In MA, 1 out of every 40. In NV, 1 out of every 9. In OH, its 1 out of every 4. In TN, 1 out of every 3. In WI its 9 out of every 10.
See how WI is an outlier in a Cruz v. Trump matchup?
It is very likely in that scenario that what we would be looking at now is Trump with outright majorities in a majority of the contests so far, including ALL of the big states. He would be much closer to wrapping this up by now.
If Cruz loses in Indiana, I think that Cruz looks at the math to figure out how likely/unlikely it is to keep Trump from 1237 on the first ballot, and that he acts accordingly.
But from here on out Cruz only needs it to work in a few states: Indiana and California, really, and only to some extent in the latter.
I think to some degree we must be talking past each other, because I’m not quite sure what you mean… obviously you can pick Cruz in one state and Kasich in another, because the voters did.
My only point is that there is some critical segment of voters who can be moved — in order to block Trump or simply get the best nominee possible. If that happens in Indiana and to any degree in Washington and parts of California, Trump will not be the nominee. It is as simple as that.