Dangerous game

Cruz plays dangerous game in Wisconsin

He’s suffered from inflated expectations before. Now he’s making that gamble again.

By Katie Glueck

Ted Cruz’s campaign manager predicted Cruz would win Iowa “outside the margin of error.” Marco Rubio stole the spotlight. Cruz himself predicted that Super Tuesday’s slew of southern primaries would be the firewall against Donald Trump’s surging campaign. Trump thumped him.

Now Cruz is playing the same high-stakes expectations game again in Wisconsin, with his campaign talking up a primary election win that Cruz badly needs — but can’t promise to deliver.

“Absolutely, Cruz will win Wisconsin,” said state Rep. Bob Gannon, one of his Wisconsin co-chairs.

An internal campaign memo from mid-March, that found its way to many reporters, was only slightly less cautious: “Based on internal polling and proximity to neighboring states in which Cruz has already won, our Campaign is in a strong position to win both Utah and Wisconsin,” the memo read.

But the few polls that have been conducted suggest Wisconsin is a wide-open race. And this time, if Cruz falls short of expectations again, there will be no safety net to catch him. After Wisconsin’s April 5 primary, the race heads to a string of northeastern states that are unfriendly territory for the Texas senator.

Winning Wisconsin, on the other hand, would be a huge boon for Cruz. Forty-two delegates are at stake, and Wisconsin’s primary rules means the victor takes almost all of them. Not only would that severely complicate Trump’s quest to get to 1,237 delegates, a purple-state win would also go a long way toward proving Cruz can win outside the deeply conservative states where his wins have been concentrated so far.

Cruz is pulling out all the stops in the hopes of making his Wisconsin gamble pay off.

He is opening field offices across the state; he has campaign chairs in nearly every county in Wisconsin; and both he and his wife, Heidi, have campaigned there this week. He’s even opening “Camp Cruz,” a space for out-of-state volunteers.

He’s getting support from other big names in the party too, now that some prominent party leaders have settled on Cruz as the lone viable anti-Trump alternative. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has indicated he could endorse as soon as this weekend. And after winning Utah Tuesday with the help of Mitt Romney and other state power players, Cruz got Jeb Bush’s endorsement Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Cruz's Wisconsin leadership team is seeking to lock down former backers of Marco Rubio, who enjoyed significant support in the state legislature.

They are hopeful that as Cruz continues to rack up his delegate totals, a significant slice of the formerly pro-Rubio contingent will come on board, seeing Cruz as the party's most viable alternative to Trump, especially given that Ohio Gov. John Kasich is stuck at 143 delegates and only one win — his home state.

“We’re definitely seeing a migration over to Cruz now that Rubio dropped out,” said state Sen. Duey Stroebel, Cruz’s campaign chair in the state who is courting, among others, Speaker Robin Vos, previously a prominent Rubio backer. “It’s an ongoing process.”

Cruz’s strongest asset, however, may be the strong “Never Trump” movement that began earlier and more aggressively in Wisconsin than did the national efforts to halt the GOP frontrunner's march to the nomination. It is led by prominent local conservative radio hosts like Charlie Sykes, and also embraced by Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, both of whom are now backing Cruz.

“The heart of the Republican vote in Wisconsin is in suburban Milwaukee, and that area in particular has been hostile to Trump,” said Mark Graul, a longtime Wisconsin-based GOP strategist unaligned this cycle.

“A leading factor is that conservative media, particularly talk radio, has been very anti-Trump from the start, and that those voices have gone from being anti-Trump to being pro-Cruz, as the election now comes to Wisconsin, that will be very beneficial to Sen. Cruz in areas where probably 40 percent of the Republican vote comes from in two weeks,” a reference to suburban counties around Milwaukee.

Still, Cruz’s team has plenty to overcome.

Demographically, the state should favor Trump, who tends to do better with blue-collar workers: according to exit polls from the 2012 GOP primary in the state, 57 percent of those who voted had no college degree and 98 percent were white. Sixty-two percent were not evangelical Christians.

Trump could also benefit from the fact that Wisconsin is an open primary, meaning voters with any party registration, rather than just committed Republican voters, can participate. State officials said earlier this week that they expect voter turnout to hit 40 percent on April 5, a number not seen since 1980 in Wisconsin—and high turnout is often good news for Trump, who tends to draw voters with little previous involvement in the political process.

“We expect Donald Trump to bring new voters to the polls – for and against – in the Republican Presidential Preference Primary,” said Kevin J. Kennedy, Wisconsin’s chief elections official, in a statement posted by the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board.

And as long as Kasich, a fellow Midwesterner, remains in the Wisconsin race, there remains the risk that he dilutes Cruz’s alternative-to-Trump message by offering another option to voters who see Cruz as too conservative or unelectable in a general election. His campaign in the state is run by former Gov. Tommy Thompson.

State insiders are well aware of Kasich’s threat to play spoiler.

“For those who are not wanting to vote for Trump, Cruz is probably the leader in the pack, but he’s going to have to work on that, because I don’t think he’s well-known in Wisconsin—that’s why he’s going to have to run a good campaign,” said Graul, the unaligned GOP strategist. “Otherwise, Kasich is probably better-known, and might be in a spot to take some of those votes.”

“But if Cruz does the right things over the next two weeks,” Graul said, “that should put him in a strong position to win the state.”

His team, as they made clear last week, is counting on it.