Trump protesters block road at rally
Tempers flare at campaign event after cars parked in middle of highway
PROTESTERS blocked a main highway leading into the Phoenix suburb where Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump staged a campaign rally on Saturday just days ahead of the Arizona primary.
Tempers flared at the rally, but without the violence that marred Trump’s event in Chicago a week earlier. He never goaded the protesters as he usually does at campaign events.
For hours, about two dozen protesters parked their cars in the middle of the main road to the event, unfurling banners reading “Dump Trump” and “Must Stop Trump”, and chanting “Trump is hate”.
Traffic was backed up for kilometres, with drivers honking in fury. The road was eventually cleared and protesters marched down the highway to the rally site, weaving between Trump supporters who booed and jeered them.
Trump was in Arizona to campaign ahead of tomorrow’s primary, in which the winner will take all 58 delegates at stake. Polls show Trump leading his rivals in Arizona, a border state where Trump’s hard-line on immigration has drawn support from Republican voters.
Trump was introduced at the rally by Joe Arpaio, the tough-talking sheriff of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and nearly two-thirds of Arizona’s population. Arpaio has supported harsh measures to deal with immigrants living illegally in the US. He has forced inmates to wear pink underwear and live outside in tents during temperatures above 38°C heat.
Trump’s main rivals, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio governor John Kasich, are desperately trying to prevent the real estate mogul from accumulating the 1 237 delegates needed to secure the nomination at the party’s national convention in July.
They are hoping for a contested convention in which delegates would be freed to turn from Trump if he fails to win a majority on the first ballot.
Trump has won 678 delegates in contests held thus far, according to a count by The Associated Press. Cruz is in second place with 423 delegates, and Kasich is in third with 143.
His rivals hope to offset a likely Trump win tomorrow with a strong showing in the Utah caucuses, where Mormons account for two-thirds of the state’s 3 million residents. Limited polling shows Trump running second to Cruz, but ahead of Kasich, said Jason Perry, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah.
The delegates will be distributed according to percentage of votes, unless a candidate gets more than 50 percent, which would give that person all 40 delegates.
Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and the Mormon faith’s most visible member, said he intends to vote for Cruz in the caucuses, but stopped short of endorsing the Texas senator, an uncompromising conservative.
Hillary Clinton is making her own lastminute push to win Arizona. Former president Bill Clinton was campaigning for his wife in the state yesterday, and the former first lady and secretary of state has a rally today.
Several thousand kilometres away in New York, demonstrators also took to the streets to protest the Republican presidential hopeful, marching with a heavy police presence to Trump Tower, the Fifth Avenue skyscraper where Trump lives. Demonstrators chanted: “Donald Trump, go away, racist, sexist, anti-gay.” – AP
TRAFFIC WAS BACKED UP FOR KILOMETRES, WITH DRIVERS HONKING IN FURY