LAFAYETTE, Ind. — With time running short and polls looking grim, Ted Cruz is turning up the intensity as he tries to make the final hours of the Indiana primary campaign a turning point in his uphill presidential run.
If there were any doubts about the stakes, Cruz’s friend Rep. Louie Gohmert, who has been traveling with a sometimes motley Cruz campaign entourage, set the stage Sunday by telling about 1,000 supporters gathered at the sprawling Faith Church complex, “This is the defining moment. Tuesday in Indiana is the defining moment.”
No pressure.
At stake is not victory — there’s already no way for Cruz to win enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination before the convention — but Cruz’s hopes of holding Donald Trump below the 1,237 delegates he needs to win going into Cleveland. If Cruz loses here Tuesday, he’ll have a hard time convincing anyone other than die-hard fans that there’s a realistic chance of doing that.
Cruz knows what his supporters are hearing every day on the news. The morning of the Lafayette event, a new NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll was released showing Trump with a 15-point lead in Indiana. Everyone saw it. In Lafayette, Cruz, while not mentioning the poll specifically, suggested it’s all part of an establishment plan to get him out of the race in favor of Trump.
“The mainstream media wants this race to be over,” Cruz said. “The New York powerbrokers want this race to be over. The Washington lobbyists want this race to be over. John Boehner wants this race to be over.”
The last name got a laugh from the crowd. The retired speaker, who recently called Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh,” has emerged as a particular target in Cruz’s Indiana campaign. On Saturday, when Cruz was away in California and vice-presidential choice Carly Fiorina, Cruz’s wife Heidi, Sen. Mike Lee, and Gohmert stumped for Cruz in small venues around Indiana, Boehner’s words came up a lot.
At a pizza restaurant in Greenfield, Fiorina said of Boehner, “Remember, this is the guy who lost his job because he wouldn’t lead. This is the guy who didn’t do anything with historic conservative majorities in the House and Senate to stand up to President Obama. This is a man it turns out is texting and golfing buddies with Donald Trump — and proud of it.”
Gohmert, who is not known for discussing psychiatric concepts very often in his day job, explained that Boehner’s comments were a textbook example of projection. “It’s driven me crazy in the House to have people that are deceptive and constantly having ill motives and what psychologists call projecting — well, I have these evil motives or ill intent and so I’m going to assume you do, too,” Gohmert said.
Later, I asked Gohmert whether Boehner’s comments might actually be a boost for Cruz. “I don’t think it’s ever great when anybody calls you Lucifer,” Gohmert said, “but I think it says a lot about Boehner and his preference for Trump.”
I asked Fiorina the same question, and she said, “I hope it reminds people that [Cruz] is a guy who is a principled conservative, who isn’t afraid to stand up to people who perhaps lost their principles a while ago.”
If you’re campaigning among the Republican base, there’s really no better bad guy than the former Republican speaker.
A second villain has emerged in the Cruz campaign, and that is Mike Tyson, the former heavyweight champ who was found guilty of rape and served prison time in Indiana. Trump has spoken positively of Tyson as a “tough guy,” giving the Cruz camp an opening. On Sunday, Fiorina told the crowd that the Indiana campaign has become “a tale of two Mikes.” On the Trump side, there is the convicted rapist Tyson. On the Cruz side, there is the respected Gov. Mike Pence, who has said he will vote for Cruz. Could there be a sharper contrast?
Cruz is a better candidate than he was early in the race. The streamlined jobs-freedom-security agenda he introduced before a double-digit win in Wisconsin last month has given Cruz an easy framework to focus on some key issues for Indiana Republicans: regulation, taxes, Second Amendment, Obamacare, religious liberty. But talk to people who come to Cruz events, and you’ll soon discover many, perhaps most, are with him for two basic reasons: God and the Constitution.
“I’m a Christian, and Ted is a very godly man,” said Curtis Cole, of Lafayette, who came to see Cruz at Faith Church. “He knows the Constitution.”
“He matches my principles — the Constitution, and he’s a biblical Christian,” said Fred Maas, of West Lafayette, who early voted for Cruz the day before.
Cole, Maas, and the rest of the crowd applauded when Glenn Beck, the radio host who has joined the Cruz entourage at various stops around the country, said Cruz’s devotion to the Constitution might be the only thing that can save the United States. “The fundamental transformation of America that Barack Obama promised us in 2008 happens if we choose incorrectly this time,” Beck said. “We need somebody to throw this in reverse and head back to the Constitution.” It got a huge ovation.
“Please, for the love of God, do the right thing Tuesday,” Beck added.
Earlier in the weekend, I stopped by Cruz headquarters outside of Indianapolis. It was an unfinished, concrete-floor room with tables and about 75 telephones set up. Nearly every one of the phones was taken by a volunteer making calls for Cruz. More were walking in as I looked around.
The depth of their belief in Cruz was striking. Some had started the long Republican race supporting other candidates — Ben Carson was one name cited often — but many said they had been with Cruz from the very beginning. Because of God and the Constitution.
“His moral code and his legal code,” said Frank Cerrone, a volunteer from South Indianapolis, when I asked what drew him to Cruz. Cerrone explained that he has been taking a Hillsdale College online course about the Constitution, which has made him appreciate Cruz’s approach even more.
Cruz’s stump speeches are less overtly religious now than they were in Iowa, when he was going all out to win the evangelical vote. But religion remains a huge part of the Cruz campaign. If he pulls out a win in Indiana, or even gets close, it will be because of his assiduous courting of faith leaders.
Almost immediately after Cruz’s big win in Wisconsin, aides pointed to Indiana as the next place where Cruz might win. (They had no illusions about New York and the other northeastern states Trump won easily.) But problems arose. The talk-radio phalanx that was so effective for Cruz in Wisconsin? It didn’t really happen in Indiana. The energetic endorsement by Gov. Scott Walker, who campaigned for Cruz? That didn’t happen either, with Pence’s tepid-and-late endorsement.
But one thing that worked for Cruz in Wisconsin has also been working in Indiana, and that is the quiet engagement of ministers across the state. When the campaign moved to New York and Pennsylvania, Cruz’s father, Rafael, a minister himself, spent a couple of weeks here in Indiana meeting with small groups of pastors, recruiting them to support his son.
Rafael talked about some political issues like the Supreme Court, but his larger message was about character, leadership, and faith. “He was giving a message about what the Bible says about leadership,” said Micah Clark, executive director of the American Family Association of Indiana, who attended a couple of the meetings. “He said we need to be biblically correct, rather than politically correct…He impressed the pastors with his knowledge of the Bible, which was diverse and strong; he would quote a dozen or more verses on character in his talk.”
In a brief video conversation with Clark posted on the AFA Indiana Facebook page, Rafael Cruz made the case for Ted. “I implore, I exhort every member of the Body of Christ to vote according to the word of God, and vote for the candidate that stands on the word of God and on the Constitution of the United States of America,” Cruz said. “And I am convinced that man is my son, Ted Cruz. The alternative could be the destruction of America.”
Rafael’s exhortations worked. On Friday before the primary, the Cruz campaign sent out a press released headlined, “More than 50 Indiana Clergy and Pro-Family Leaders Endorse Cruz.” That’s not as many as in Wisconsin, but it’s a lot of churches.
In a more conventional campaign, Cruz’s strength with religious Republicans might be enough to put him over the top. But the polls in Indiana say otherwise. And there is other evidence that the state is simply in a different mood these days.
“I see a lot more Trump signs than I do Cruz signs,” Janice Silvey, chair of the Hancock County Republican Party, told me at the pizza parlor in Greenfield Saturday. “I’m getting a lot of emails from people wanting Trump signs, so I’m wondering if we’re not going that way here. It seems like the Tea Party has gone with Trump in Hancock County.”
Other places, too. And that has left even the Cruz faithful worried about what is ahead. When I asked Curtis Cole what he thinks will happen Tuesday, he responded, “What do I think, or what do I hope?” Both, I said. “I hope Ted Cruz wins by a landslide,” Cole answered. “But I’m a little skeptical about that.”
