Trump sweeps 5 states; Clinton extends lead
Trailing badly, Cruz moves on to ‘more favorable terrain’
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump won sweeping victories in five Northeastern states Tuesday night, widening his delegate lead and significantly boosting his hopes of clinching the Republican presidential nomination in advance of the national convention.
For rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich, trailing distantly, the only real question was whether they could pick off delegates in favorable congressional districts to minimize the damage from Trump’s dominant wins.
Cruz, running a clear third everywhere but Pennsylvania, appeared to be in danger of getting shut out of the night’s delegate race, a scenario that would underscore his need for a dominant showing next
week in Indiana.
With a combined 172 delegates at stake, the states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware offered a delegate haul equal to that of California, the giant primary that looms on June 7, the last day of the 2016 GOP primaries.
Trump declared himself the “presumptive nominee.” “When one boxer knocks out the other boxer, you don’t have to wait for a decision,” he said at a rally at Trump headquarters in New York. “That’s what happened tonight.”
Cruz, trying to look past a night of devastating defeats, rallied at the Hoosier Gym in Knightstown, Indiana — the scene of the basketball movie “Hoosiers” — where he hoped to shift the focus toward culturally conservative ground more like Texas.
“Tonight this campaign moves back to more favorable terrain,” Cruz told cheering supporters. “Tonight this campaign moves to Indiana.” He also mentioned Nebraska, Montana and South Dakota.
Recalling the underdog narrative of the 1986 film — he had an aide measure the 10-foot height of the basketball rim — Cruz told his supporters “there is nothing that Hoosiers cannot do.”
Cruz, speaking before the polls closed, also sought to mock the media and turn his attention to the general election, suggesting that Trump is a “media-anointed” liberal being promoted to help Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
Telegraphing what is likely to be the overarching theme of the rest of the primary campaign, Cruz pressed his case that Trump is a recent convert to conservatism, joking that he could well serve as Clinton’s running mate.
On to Indiana
Trump also made clear his intention to contest Indiana, the next battleground in the race. He said he would campaign with Bobby Knight, the legendary Indiana basketball coach. “He knows how to win,” Trump said. “That’s the gold standard in Indiana.”
Trump went in to the so-called Acela primary — named after the Amtrak rail line that connects the five states — with 844 delegates, 393 short of the 1,237-delegate majority needed for the nomination. Trump aides predicted that Tuesday’s voting would keep the front-runner on track to hit the mark.
Cruz and Kasich, after an unprecedented deal to divide their efforts in different states, signaled that they are looking ahead to upcoming contests in the primary calendar where they hope to block Trump from sealing the nomination.
Cruz, in particular, is keying on next Tuesday’s primary in Indiana, a conservative Midwestern state with 57 delegates. Kasich has agreed not to campaign there in hopes of helping Cruz derail Trump’s march to the nomination.
The strategic tag-team effort would also require the Texas senator to make way for Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico, states where the Ohio governor’s centrist pitch might gain more traction.
But as Tuesday’s contests showed, Kasich has been unable to win anything but his home state of Ohio, and Trump has shown an ability to go after some of Cruz’s core constituencies. CNN exit polling in Pennsylvania showed Trump winning a majority of evangelical voters. He also won a majority of conservative voters in Maryland, and Connecticut voters who described themselves as “angry” at the government.
Still, with little margin for error, a significant Trump stumble in any of the upcoming contests where he is favored would keep alive Cruz’s hopes of forcing a contested convention and wresting the nomination in a floor battle.
With 10 states remaining, both Cruz and Kasich have been mathematically eliminated from winning the nomination outright in advance of July’s national convention in Cleveland.
Their only chance is a first-ballot deadlock — with no candidate winning a majority of the delegates. That would leave many delegates free to vote however they wish in successive rounds of convention balloting, regardless of their state’s primary results.
Trump, the leading GOP vote-getter in the primaries so far, has been sharply critical of the party’s convention allotment system, calling it “corrupt” and “rigged.” Even after running the table on Tuesday, the billionaire businessman still faces an urgent test in amassing enough delegates to avoid a contested convention, where Cruz is expected to have a vastly superior delegate organization.
Cruz’s organization
Going forward, Trump still needs solid finishes in West Virginia, New Jersey and California — considered his three best remaining states — to help him clinch the nomination.
But Cruz could hold him back with stronger-thanexpected showings in any of those states, along with Indiana, Nebraska and South Dakota, heartland states where he is either competitive or favored over Trump.
Another significant factor could be the distribution of the 71 delegates from Pennsylvania, Tuesday night’s biggest prize. Only 17 of those delegates will be allocated to the statewide winner. Another 54 district delegates are unbound, meaning they could vote for anybody at the national convention.
Some delegates have indicated they will vote for the statewide winner, or the winner of their congressional district. But that is far from clear.
An unusual Pennsylvania “loophole” makes the state’s district delegates elected by name, directly by voters — separately from the presidential-preference vote. The results of those contests were not immediately clear Tuesday night.
Cruz and Trump have been working behind the scenes in Pennsylvania to recruit supporters as candidates for delegate slots, and to guide their campaigns. But Charlie Gerow, a GOP strategist in Harrisburg, Pa., said Trump’s delegate game might have been “too little, too late.”
“I think it’s fair to say that the Cruz team did better than the Trump team,” he said. “What you’re seeing in Pennsylvania is a mirror of what has occurred in other states.”