New York Times
By Alan Rappeport
April 6, 016
Setting
their sights on the next big delegate prizes, the presidential
candidates descended on New York and Pennsylvania on Wednesday
afternoon, with Senators Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders
looking to extend the momentum from their Wisconsin victories while
Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton work to regain their footing after
stinging defeats.
Mr.
Trump and Mrs. Clinton, who still have wide delegate leads in the
Republican and Democratic nominating contests, will be working furiously
to win New York, where their opponents are devoting
significant resources to try to score upsets in the delegate-rich state
in its April 19 primary. With both candidates having deep roots in the
state, losses would be especially painful. Mr. Trump, who has been
uncharacteristically quiet on Wednesday, planned
an evening rally that is expected to draw thousands of supporters.
A
poll released Wednesday showed Mr. Trump with more than 50 percent
support, and showing particular strength in New York City, Long Island
and western New York. Still, the pressure is intense
on Mr. Trump, who is enduring the most challenging stretch of his
insurgent candidacy. His rally in Bethpage, Long Island, which is
expected to draw up to 10,000 people, comes after a week of damaging
questions about his treatment of women and knowledge of
policy. And his double-digit defeat in Wisconsin further emboldened the
Stop Trump movement within the Republican Party.
“The
shine is off and the Donald’s impermeable Teflon coating has finally
been pierced,” said Ryan Williams, a Republican political consultant and
former spokesman for Mitt Romney. “The sheer
magnitude of the margin of Trump’s humiliating loss shows that his
trail of outrageous comments is finally catching up with him.”
At
an event in Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton questioned the rhetoric of
her Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders, asserting that he “doesn’t have a
plan at all” in a number of areas.
Mr.
Trump is planning to respond to the onslaught of negative attention
with a series of more polished policy speeches and endorsements from
Republican county chairmen in New York. But in
a sign of what his campaign will bring to the media-saturated New York
metropolitan region, the police on Long Island will be bracing for
potential violence at his campaign event, as throngs of protesters are
also planning to greet Mr. Trump with “No Hate
in Our State.”
“We
have listened to him disparage his fellow Republican candidates,
denigrate the Democratic candidates, belittle the press and deprecate
all who disagree with him,” the Long Island Progressive
Coalition wrote in a Facebook post organizing the protest. “On this day
we will come together, and say no to his thirst for hatred, and
violence.”
New
York should be friendly terrain for Mr. Trump, as a new Monmouth
University poll showed 52 percent of likely Republican voters supporting
him. Gov. John Kasich of Ohio came in second
place with 25 percent, while Mr. Cruz trailed them at 17 percent.
But
Mr. Cruz is hoping conservative voters will forgive his disparaging
remarks about “New York values” and fall behind him as he courts the
Stop Trump movement by arguing he is a viable
alternative who can win important states. The Texas senator was not too
far from Mr. Trump on Wednesday as he headed to the Bronx for a
meet-and-greet event at a Latino restaurant, courting voters in a
borough where Hispanic evangelicals are a potent political
force.
At
one point, Mr. Cruz was asked in Spanish about bringing his hard-line
message on undocumented immigration to a community of immigrants.
“Our
community, the Hispanic community,” he said, before the reporter asked
if he could answer in Spanish. He said he understands the language
better than he speaks it.
“I
have the problem of a second-generation immigrant,” he said, before
sprinkling in a bit of Spanish — closer to “Spanglish,” he allowed — and
addressing the question.
“I think the most powerful value in the Hispanic community is the American dream,” he said.
He added that the news media often tried “to convey any Republicans as somehow mean and nasty” to the Hispanic community.
Mr.
Trump stayed off Twitter and morning talk shows in the wake of his
Wisconsin defeat, but his frustration was palpable in a statement the
campaign released overnight assailing the millions
of dollars in attack ads leveled at him. His spokeswoman called Mr.
Cruz “Lyin’ Ted” and described him as a “Trojan horse” who was being
used by the Republican establishment to steal the nomination from Mr.
Trump.
As
Mr. Trump tries to correct course, drama within the campaign could be
percolating. Mr. Trump has shrugged off reports of internal strife, but
calls to fire his campaign manager, who is
facing battery charges, could grow if Mr. Cruz’s team continues to
outmaneuver them in the hunt for state delegates across the country. The
loss in Wisconsin means that it is increasingly likely that Mr. Trump
will need to be ready for a fight at the convention
in Cleveland starting on July 18 unless he pulls off a string of big
victories in coming states.
“The
threat of Trump using Wisconsin as a potential springboard to the
nomination probably focused the minds of anti-Trump voters in Wisconsin,
and many strategically voted for Cruz as a
way to block Trump,” said Kyle D. Kondik, the director of
communications at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “The
chances of a contested convention just went up, but Trump still has a
chance to finish April strong.”
On
the Democratic side, Mrs. Clinton is also looking to finish the month
on a better note after losing six of the last seven states to Mr.
Sanders. With Wisconsin behind them, both candidates
were headed to Pennsylvania, one of five states holding primaries on
April 26. A Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday found Mrs.
Clinton holding a six-point lead among likely Democratic voters in the
state.
Despite
his recent gains, Mr. Sanders faces a challenge when it comes to
erasing Mrs. Clinton’s lead of more than 200 pledged delegates. Math is
not the only concern, however, as increased
scrutiny this week appeared to lay bare some gaps in the Vermont
senator’s knowledge of policy.
In
an interview in New York with the The Daily News’s editorial board, Mr.
Sanders struggled to explain how he would carry out his Wall Street
reform plans, and he was vague when asked about
the economic ramifications of thousands of bankers losing their jobs.
Mrs.
Clinton, who has clashed repeatedly with Mr. Sanders over financial
regulation, took notice of her rival’s apparent blunder in an interview
with MSNBC on Wednesday and suggested that
he was not prepared to be president.
“Well,
I think he hadn’t done his homework,” Mrs. Clinton said. “He’d been
talking for more than a year about doing things that he obviously hadn’t
really studied or understood, and that
does raise a lot of questions.”
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