CAMPAIGNING: Cruz hopes to emerge victorious from S. Carolina primary battle
GREENVILLE, S.C. — For all the barbecue and talk of Jesus, it’s the lawyers who have set the tone for Saturday’s full-contact primary smack-down in South Carolina.
Amid the smoke of political attacks, dirty tricks and threats of legal action, one thing still remains clear as voters go to the polls: South Carolina is Donald Trump’s to lose. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, his top challengers here, have been zigzagging the state in buses, scrambling to consolidate separate non-Trump constituencies.
Much like in New Hampshire, Trump dominates headlines — even catching the attention of Pope Francis, who, two days ahead of the primary, questioned the Christian ethics of a wall along the U.S.Mexico border.
Cruz, who also favors a wall, won in Iowa and topped one national poll this week. On paper, he likely has the strongest claim on much-needed silver in the Palmetto State. But Rubio, armed with the endorsement of South Carolina’s popular
Republican governor, Nikki Haley, also faces the curse or the blessing of high expectations.
That’s the story line so far. The details haven’t been pretty.
From pointed stump speeches to whisper campaigns and a brawling debate stage, the first presidential contest in the South — Cruz’s home turf — has lived up to its scrappy reputation for low blows, complete with threats of legal action.
“When you come to South Carolina, it’s a blood sport. Politics is a blood sport,” Haley said Thursday in Anderson, where she was campaigning with Rubio. “I wear heels; it’s not for a fashion statement. It’s because you’ve got to be prepared to kick at any time.”
Trump, stung by Cruz ads questioning his conservatism, opened the final week of the campaign by lambasting his rival as “unstable” and threatening to bring suits for defamation and “the fact that he was born in Canada and therefore cannot be president.”
Cruz’s response? “Please Donald, file this lawsuit.”
Accusations of mud-slinging
In a primary that is central to Cruz’s southern strategy, his campaign has also turned to its lawyers, siccing them on television stations across South Carolina and Georgia with demands that they drop attack ads by an independent group accusing him of once proposing “mass legalization of illegal immigrants.”
The ad mirrors attacks by Rubio, who has argued that Cruz talked about bringing unauthorized immigrants “out of the shadows” during a 2013 Senate debate on immigration.
Cruz denounced the attack, noting that he led the opposition to the Rubio-backed immigration bill, which he said would provide “amnesty” for some 11 million immigrants who live in the United States illegally.
When Rubio failed to show up at a conservative conference here Thursday, citing a tight schedule, the Cruz campaign pounced.
“This is a final admission that Marco Rubio isn’t even going to try to compete for the votes of conservatives in South Carolina or anywhere else,” said Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler. “Rubio and his campaign would rather hide behind their deceptive campaign tactics and liberal record on amnesty for illegals.”
But it is Cruz and his backers who have mostly been accused of dirty tricks.
Some South Carolina television stations canceled an ad from a pro-Cruz super PAC last week that portrayed Rubio as a supporter of “sanctuary” cities — jurisdictions that in some cases protect illegal immigrants from federal immigration authorities.
Amid accusations of mudslinging, Rubio sought to tie the Cruz campaign to a fake Facebook page purporting to show South Carolina U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy, a prominent Rubio backer, switching to Cruz. He also complained about a Cruz campaign depiction — based on a doctored online photo — of Rubio shaking hands with President Barack Obama.
Cruz denied any involvement in the Facebook page. But his campaign acknowledged using a Photoshopped picture, which has become part of a growing narrative stemming from Cruz’s hardball tactics in Iowa, where his campaign sent out fake election “violation” notices and told voters Ben Carson was quitting the race.
“I think this is now a disturbing pattern, guys,” Rubio told reporters Thursday before a rally in Anderson with Gowdy and Haley. “Every day they are making things up.”
Trump, in a televised town hall in Columbia Thursday night, joined in the attack on Cruz. “He holds up the Bible,” he said, “and then he lies.”
The Cruz camp has dismissed the criticism as part of the background noise of any hard-fought campaign.
“If Rubio has a better picture of him shaking hands with Barack Obama I’m happy to swap it out,” Tyler told CNN. “Two days before the presidential primary in South Carolina, they want to talk about a picture we used.”
While it remains unsettled, the Facebook controversy also buffeted Cruz in the final days of the South Carolina campaign, which tracking agencies say has been marked by some 10,000 ads in the past two weeks just between Cruz, Rubio and their backers.
Cruz adamantly denied involvement in the phony Facebook page about Gowdy, saying in a tweet, “This kind of deception is deplorable and nothing like it would be tolerated by this campaign.”
He also enlisted the help of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has been campaigning with Cruz in South Carolina. Perry, who dropped out of the race last summer, accused Rubio of negative tactics of his own, including using phony “push polls” against Cruz — something Cruz has also been accused of doing against Rubio.
“The Rubio campaign has feigned outrage at a fake Facebook post that has no evidence of being connected to the Cruz campaign,” Perry said in a statement put out by the Cruz campaign.
Rubio aides said nobody but Cruz benefitted from the mysterious Facebook page, which has since been taken down. Gowdy, its high-profile target, made no bones about his suspicions.
“As a prosecutor, and in Congress, I’ve devoted by life to the rule of law and truth,” Gowdy said in a statement. “Unfortunately, it appears that the campaign of Senator Ted Cruz may not place the same value on waging a contest based on the truth and facts.”
Able to take a punch
Cruz has had an easier time fending off Trump, whose legal threats appear to have more publicity value than legal merit.
In a separate legal salvo, Trump sent Cruz a “cease and desist” letter Tuesday demanding that the Texan take down television ads using a 1999 interview in which Trump said he is “pro-choice in every respect” on abortion.
Trump’s lawyer, Jeffrey Goldman, said the ad misrepresents Trump’s current position against abortion rights. He threatened a defamation suit.
“I have to confess I laughed out loud,” Cruz told a town hall Wednesday night, three days before voters cast their ballots. Cruz, a Harvard-educated lawyer, said the ad was based on Trump’s “own words” and that he’d be happy to litigate the case personally.
Voters in the Palmetto State seemed to take it in stride. “It’s probably nastier than it’s been in a while, mostly for the fact that you’ve got six people on the Republican side vying for votes,” said Bill Blandine, a volunteer at Trump’s Upstate headquarters, where there’s a life-size cutout of the real estate tycoon in the lobby along with a video screen showing his speeches.
Some see the heated battle as a prelude to the all-out March 1 “Super Tuesday” contest across the South, with Texas as the larg- est prize.
“We love it,” said former South Carolina Republican Party chairman Katon Dawson, who has remained neutral so far. “There are only a few differences between South Carolina and Texas. Texas wants to see if you can throw a punch. South Carolina wants to see if you can take one.”
Some, particularly John Kasich — the surprise second-place finisher in New Hampshire — have stayed out of the fracas. Jeb Bush, struggling to get traction, has mainly jousted with Trump, his frequent antagonist.
Carson also remains a quiet presence, possibly costing Cruz some support in a state that, like Iowa, has close to a 65 percent preponderance of evangelical voters in its GOP primary base.
Cruz, making his case to evangelicals, has sought to portray himself as the most committed to his vision of a nation built on “Judeo Christian values.”
He has deployed his father, Baptist preacher Rafael Cruz, to talk to church groups across the state. He also has banked heavily on the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, whose funeral he will attend Saturday in Washington, D.C., even as voters go to the polls in South Carolina.
Warning of a liberal “assault” on conservative values, Cruz told a Baptist megachurch in Spartanburg, “We are one justice away from a five-justice radical left wing majority the likes of which we have never seen.”
In ads and town halls, he has slammed Trump for once supporting late-term abortions, giving money to Hillary Clinton and backing government-supported universal health care.
Speaking at a Faith and Family Presidential Forum, Cruz also questioned the depth of Rubio’s opposition to abortion. He charged that his Florida colleague failed to get behind his effort to risk a government shutdown over funding for Planned Parenthood
Despite South Carolina’s strong evangelical streak, the state is bigger, more populous and more diverse than Iowa. A recent poll here showed that a larger segment of self-identified evangelical voters favored Trump over Cruz.
Praying for surprise ending
But the religious right isn’t Cruz’s only calling card in South Carolina.
Mindful of the state’s heavy military presence, he gave a speech Tuesday on the vintage aircraft carrier Yorktown near Charleston, where he promised a major military buildup.
He also has mined the periphery of South Carolina’s Republican right wing.
His South Carolina campaign co-chairs are State Sen. Lee Bright and Rep. Bill Chumley, among a handful of legislators who fought to keep the Confederate flag flying on the Capitol grounds.
On Friday, the Post and Courier in Charleston reported that a pro-Ted Cruz robo-telephone call is blasting Trump for supporting the decision to remove the flag. The call was identified as coming from the pro-Cruz Courageous Conservative Political Action Committee, not the Cruz campaign itself.
Meanwhile Bush, Kasich and, to some extent, Rubio have sought to make their stand with traditional Republicans — the sort who delivered the state to George W. Bush in 2000.
The former president and his mother have been campaigning for Jeb Bush, who still trails in the polls. If Trump falters on Saturday, some analysts will blame it less on the contretemps with Cruz or the Pope than on Trump’s attacks on George W. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq.
But for Cruz, the heart of his South Carolina strategy still largely rests on Christian activists like Erik Corcoran. Once a volunteer for Perry’s presidential campaign, Corcoran is now Cruz’s South Carolina faith director.
Despite the rough play, he prays for a surprise ending that could put Cruz on a trajectory to overcome Trump in the South.
“A lot of these independent Baptists, Southern Baptists and regular Baptists, they haven’t voted in a while,” said Corcoran, who has been traveling the state meeting the pastors on behalf of Cruz. “They weren’t inspired by Mitt Romney, and they had no passion for John McCain. But they look at Ted Cruz as one of them.”