The Republican primary exploded in vitriol just before Super Tuesday when 11 states, including Texas, will vote — and for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), overshadowed first by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) broadside against Donald Trump and then by the surprise endorsement of Trump by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a win in his home state is do or die.
The latest blow to the Texas senator came Sunday afternoon: another endorsement of Trump, this one by U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a determined opponent of immigration reform and one of Cruz's few allies in the Senate.
“It appears unlikely that he’ll have a dramatic, convincing, big win but he needs to at least squeak it out because if he loses I think it’s the end of the line for him,” Southern Methodist University political science professor Cal Jillson said.
Texas is expected to offer a home-field advantage to Cruz, especially among conservatives with whom he is popular, and he has gotten the endorsements of both the current Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and the former Republican Gov. Rick Perry.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll released Sunday showed Cruz leading Trump 39 percent to 26 percent among likely Republican voters, with Rubio at 16 percent.
But other polls have ranged from putting Cruz comfortably ahead by up to 15 points to being dead even with Trump. The Real Clear Politics poll average had Cruz ahead by 8.6 percentage points.
Cruz, who has won only Iowa, campaigned hard against Trump on Sunday, criticizing his use of foreign labor to construct his projects and linking him to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. A candidate who once called Clinton one of the greatest secretaries of state would mean defeat for Republicans, he said.
On NBC's "Meet the Press," he suggested that Trump was refusing to release his tax returns because of supposed ties to organized crime figures.
Texas’ Democratic primary is receiving much less attention as Clinton holds a significant lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders. In that contest, one of 13 among Democrats, the NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll had Clinton ahead 59 percent to 38 percent. The Real Clear Politics poll average showed Clinton up by 25.5 percentage points.
Matt Mackowiak, a Republican political consultant in Washington, D.C., and Austin, and founder of Potomac Strategy Group, noted that not only is Texas Cruz's home state but it has many more Republican delegates to allocate — at 155 the most of any Super Tuesday contest. Unless a candidate earns more than 50 percent of the state, they are awarded proportionately.
One hundred and eight of the delegates are allocated in 36 congressional districts. If a candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote, he wins three delegates. If not, the winner takes two delegates and the runner-up gets one.
Another 44 delegates are awarded statewide, also proportionately if a candidate does not clear 50 percent of the vote but receives more than 20 percent. The final three delegates are members of the Republican National Committee from Texas.
On the Democratic side, 222 delegates are at stake. Another 29 delegates are categorized as "superdelegates" who can choose a candidate to back at the party's national convention in July.
Mackowiak said that Cruz's team probably thought in the fall that he could pass that 50 percent mark. But though not likely now, Cruz could still take a large share of the delegates, he said, and predicts the senator will win the state by 5 to 8 percentage points.
Cruz has 27,000 volunteers in Texas and an organization with which he won a bitter Senate race in 2012 -- in a large state with 20 media markets that is difficult to organize, he said.
"He starts with a huge advantage here as a native son, as someone who a lion’s share of elected officials have endorsed, who knows the state, who has county leaders and precinct leaders across the state," Mackowiak said.
This year, Texas' primary has been pushed forward from May 29 and it has been hoping to be an influential contest with its large pool of delegates. Some of the sharpest exchanges among candidates came as they moved their campaigning into the Lone Star state after South Carolina's contest.
At a rally in Dallas on Friday, Rubio escalated the sharp attack he had opened on Trump, mocking the businessman for worrying that his pants were "wet" the night before at the GOP debate and describing him as having "one of those little sweat mustaches."
Later in the day Trump in turn made fun of Rubio's embarrassing 2013 State of the Union water break by holding up a water bottle and shouting, "It's Rubio."
Most political observers thought Trump would fade in popularity, but instead, the businessman has been famously bypassing traditional campaigning to win -- taking advantage of his celebrity for large rallies and free media coverage.
His success has relied on that celebrity as he taps into the appeal for an outsider. But there also is the simplicity of his message, which neither Cruz nor Rubio has been able to duplicate, Mackowiak said.
"It’s hard to distill their message down into one or two sentences," he said. "It’s not hard for Trump. Everyone knows 'Make America great again.' Everyone knows what he has proposed on immigrant and trade."
A poll from the University of Texas/Texas Tribune found that 21 percent of Republican primary voters thought the most important reason for choosing a candidate was to improve the American economy. The second was to give the Republican party a good chance to win in November.
In the other Super Tuesday primary states of Georgia and Tennessee, Trump leads according to new NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls. Cruz and Rubio are tied in Georgia, while in Tennessee Cruz just edges Rubio.
Cruz is seen an aggressive man with whom other people find it difficult to work, Jillson said. Late last week, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, at the same dinner at which he said his party had gone "bats**t crazy" for its embrace of Trump, also lashed into Cruz, saying he had alienated both Republicans and Democrats.
"If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate and the trial was in the Senate, nobody could convict you," he joked.
With Trump the front runner and Rubio the Republican establishment's pick to try to stop him, Cruz is the odd man out, Jillson said.
“The odds are (Trump’s) going to be the Republican nominee,” Jillson said. “And if he’s able to edge Cruz in Texas and win everywhere else, it’s over and then we’ll see the very fascinating dance of the Republican establishment coming to terms with that fact.”
Photo Credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images, File
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