Cruz aims beyond base of Christian conservatives
Senator seeks to skip pitfalls of previous Republican runs
After Ted Cruz’s win in February in the Iowa caucuses, some pundits were quick to predict that his campaign was on the same track as Mike Huckabee’s in 2008 and Rick Santorum’s in 2012: GOP hopefuls who courted evangelical voters and won early contests but failed to stitch together a broader coalition.
More than a month later, Cruz is in second place, having won seven states, and poses the biggest threat to front-runner Donald Trump. Saturday, Cruz picked up the most delegates of any Republican candidate in Wyoming, bringing his delegate count to 370, according to the Associated Press, 90 behind Trump.
Cruz faces another significant challenge Tuesday when five states and more than 360 delegates go up for grabs.
New finance rules, a shifting mood among GOP voters and the organizational skills of the Texas senator’s campaign have contributed to Cruz’s success and helped differentiate him from predecessors, said Mike Baselice, an Austin-based GOP pollster.
“It’s hard to compare the depth and breadth of campaigning now with those in ’08 and ’12,” he said. “To this point, it is clear that Cruz is the best alternative to Trump and the most viable one.”
Since announcing his candidacy last year at Jerry Falwell-founded Liberty University, courting conservative Christians has been a cornerstone of Cruz’s campaign, much like it was for Huckabee and Santorum. Both those candidates won Iowa and other conservative states but failed to win broad enough support to capture their party’s nomination.
Unlike those candidates, who focused on social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, Cruz has expanded his emphasis to include foreign policy and the economy, said Daron Shaw, government professor at the University of Texas-Austin.
Huckabee and Santorum also had stands on those issues but didn’t emphasize them the way Cruz has, Shaw said. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, and Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, also sought the 2016 GOP nomination but failed to gain the traction they did in their previous bids.
“Cruz has never confined himself to social issues,” Shaw said. “He’s been very strong on eco- nomic issues and foreign policy. It’s a multidimensional strategy. The sum total is to be ‘the’ conservative candidate.”
Cruz has benefited from new rules allowing super PACs to raise unlimited amounts of funds to promote a candidate. All told, Cruz and his backers have raised more than $104 million, nearly half of which has gone to super PACs and other PACs supporting the Texas senator. His campaign and the groups backing him trail only Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s in total money raised. Huckabee and Santorum operated on shoestring budgets, Baselice said. “I don’t think you’ll find that level of support in those campaign coffers in the ’08 and ’12 campaigns,” he said.
Tuesday will be a major test to see how wide Cruz’s support stretches. Some states will host winner-take-all contests, where the top vote getter takes home all of that state’s delegates, Baselice said. “The most critical month for Cruz is right now,” he said.