begin quote from:
Trump easily wins Florida primary; Rubio drops out
Los Angeles Times-45 minutes ago
Donald
Trump won the Florida primary on Tuesday, picking up its 99 delegates
in a winner-take-all contest and vanquishing rival Marco Rubio, ...
Rubio drops out as Trump easily wins Florida primary
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio suspended
his campaign for president on Tuesday after losing his home state’s
winner-take-all Republican primary to Donald Trump.
Rubio congratulated Trump, but also lamented what he called the “politics of resentment” stirred up by the party’s front-runner, saying the nation was becoming a fractured place where “people literally hate each other.”
“Do not give in to the fear,” Rubio said. “Do not give in to the frustration.”
Trump’s Florida victory was a big step forward in his quest to win the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the Republican presidential nomination.
The Florida results were the first of a crucial evening in the Republican race. Voters in five states Tuesday will either make Trump the party’s all-but-certain nominee or throw up hurdles that will extend the contest for weeks and boost efforts to keep the polarizing front-runner from atop the GOP ticket.
Balloting was brisk in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, reflecting the excitement that has animated the Republican race in contests across the country. Polls closed in Ohio and North Carolina at 4:30 p.m. Pacific time, and balloting ended half an hour later in the other states.
More than 350 delegates were at stake, or about a third the number needed to clinch the GOP nomination ahead of the party’s national convention this summer in Cleveland. The cache made it the second-biggest day of balloting on the 2016 primary calendar.
Before the first polls even closed, Trump notched a victory with a landslide in the Northern Mariana Islands. He won all nine delegates from the U.S. territory.
But as important as the delegate count was, the day’s significance turned more on the fates of two of the three candidates hoping to stop Trump and keep their campaigns alive.
Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich were both facing win-or-get-out contests in their home states, the first of this primary season to award delegates on a winner-take-all basis. Combined, the Florida and Ohio offered 165 delegates.
If Trump managed to carry both — polls showed him competitive in Ohio — he could be unstoppable.
The real estate magnate and reality TV star started the day with 460 delegates, nearly 100 more than Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and more than twice as many as Rubio and Kasich combined.
The balloting followed one of the oddest, most contentious weeks in a campaign that has been filled with strange and surreal moments.
The precipitating event was a racially charged near-riot at a Trump rally Friday night in Chicago, which was canceled out of security concerns.
Trump’s opponents quickly seized on the moment and the violent imagery that played around the world to once more challenge his temperament and fitness to be president. They accused him of fomenting the unrest through belligerent remarks that seemed to egg his audiences into physically confronting dissenters.
Kasich and Rubio both suggested they were having second thoughts about their promise to back Trump should he be the GOP nominee. Cruz, while criticizing Trump, would not go that far.
Trump denied any responsibility, blaming the violence on what he called professional agitators linked to Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders. He said the protesters provoked his supporters and were stifling their rights to free speech and assembly. “I don't condone violence,” Trump said repeatedly, though he sympathized with backers who chose to “be effective” with protesters in the audience. (Previously he used more pugilistic language.)
Trump said he might even pay the legal fees for a supporter who sucker-punched a demonstrator at a North Carolina rally, another moment caught on camera and widely broadcast.
For weeks, increasingly desperate Republican opponents have mounted an effort to stop Trump, to little seeming effect. More than $10 million in negative ads blazed across the Florida airwaves in just the last week alone, attacking Trump for his ethics, the failings of his business empire and his all-over-the-map political ideology.
Those meant nothing to Mark Owens, who stepped into the Miami Beach sunshine Tuesday and lit a cigar after casting a ballot for the political neophyte.
“I just think he's better prepared to help America economically,” said Owens, who owns several companies. Echoing the candidate, he suggested Trump would be a better “deal-maker” than previous presidents, whether it comes to trade or foreign relations.
“We've trusted politicians for 200 years to run our country,” Owens said. “It's time to give someone else a shot.”
With polls suggesting Florida was firmly in Trump’s grasp, much of the campaign focus turned to Ohio, a perennial fall battleground that was positioned to play a key role in the Republican nominating contest as well.
Trump laid on extra events, including an election-eve rally outside Youngstown in place of a planned Florida appearance, and turned his attention to attacking Kasich after long ignoring the Ohio governor.
He assailed him for his support as a congressman for the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact with Canada and Mexico that, Trump said, devastated the state’s economy. He also laid on personal insults in a bid to snatch a victory in Kasich’s home state and clear the governor from the race.
Kasich, whose strategy centered on staying above the salvos flying between other candidates, accused Trump of creating a “toxic” political atmosphere and, wrapping himself in the establishment mantle, spent Monday stumping alongside Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 nominee.
He also campaigned extensively around the Chicago area in a play for support in Illinois, a state with a tradition of supporting more moderate Republicans.
Giving up on every other contest, Rubio camped out in his home state, conducting what amounted to a Florida-wide apology tour. He repeatedly expressed his regrets for stooping to Trump’s level with jokes about his hair, his artificial tan and, winkingly, the size of his penis.
Rubio insisted that whatever happened Tuesday his campaign would press on, though it would be difficult continuing if he could not even win Florida, another important swing state in the fall.
While others focused on Ohio and Florida, Cruz carved his own path, campaigning throughout Missouri, Illinois and North Carolina.
Before Tuesday, he had won the most states after Trump and trailed him by 90 delegates. His uncompromisingly conservative ideology and go-it-alone stance in Washington have been a large part of his attraction to Republican voters but antagonized many party leaders who believe those qualities limit his appeal in a general election.
Rubio congratulated Trump, but also lamented what he called the “politics of resentment” stirred up by the party’s front-runner, saying the nation was becoming a fractured place where “people literally hate each other.”
ADVERTISING
Trump’s Florida victory was a big step forward in his quest to win the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the Republican presidential nomination.
The Florida results were the first of a crucial evening in the Republican race. Voters in five states Tuesday will either make Trump the party’s all-but-certain nominee or throw up hurdles that will extend the contest for weeks and boost efforts to keep the polarizing front-runner from atop the GOP ticket.
Balloting was brisk in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, reflecting the excitement that has animated the Republican race in contests across the country. Polls closed in Ohio and North Carolina at 4:30 p.m. Pacific time, and balloting ended half an hour later in the other states.
More than 350 delegates were at stake, or about a third the number needed to clinch the GOP nomination ahead of the party’s national convention this summer in Cleveland. The cache made it the second-biggest day of balloting on the 2016 primary calendar.
Before the first polls even closed, Trump notched a victory with a landslide in the Northern Mariana Islands. He won all nine delegates from the U.S. territory.
But as important as the delegate count was, the day’s significance turned more on the fates of two of the three candidates hoping to stop Trump and keep their campaigns alive.
Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich were both facing win-or-get-out contests in their home states, the first of this primary season to award delegates on a winner-take-all basis. Combined, the Florida and Ohio offered 165 delegates.
If Trump managed to carry both — polls showed him competitive in Ohio — he could be unstoppable.
The real estate magnate and reality TV star started the day with 460 delegates, nearly 100 more than Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and more than twice as many as Rubio and Kasich combined.
The balloting followed one of the oddest, most contentious weeks in a campaign that has been filled with strange and surreal moments.
The precipitating event was a racially charged near-riot at a Trump rally Friday night in Chicago, which was canceled out of security concerns.
Trump’s opponents quickly seized on the moment and the violent imagery that played around the world to once more challenge his temperament and fitness to be president. They accused him of fomenting the unrest through belligerent remarks that seemed to egg his audiences into physically confronting dissenters.
Kasich and Rubio both suggested they were having second thoughts about their promise to back Trump should he be the GOP nominee. Cruz, while criticizing Trump, would not go that far.
Trump denied any responsibility, blaming the violence on what he called professional agitators linked to Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders. He said the protesters provoked his supporters and were stifling their rights to free speech and assembly. “I don't condone violence,” Trump said repeatedly, though he sympathized with backers who chose to “be effective” with protesters in the audience. (Previously he used more pugilistic language.)
Trump said he might even pay the legal fees for a supporter who sucker-punched a demonstrator at a North Carolina rally, another moment caught on camera and widely broadcast.
For weeks, increasingly desperate Republican opponents have mounted an effort to stop Trump, to little seeming effect. More than $10 million in negative ads blazed across the Florida airwaves in just the last week alone, attacking Trump for his ethics, the failings of his business empire and his all-over-the-map political ideology.
Those meant nothing to Mark Owens, who stepped into the Miami Beach sunshine Tuesday and lit a cigar after casting a ballot for the political neophyte.
“I just think he's better prepared to help America economically,” said Owens, who owns several companies. Echoing the candidate, he suggested Trump would be a better “deal-maker” than previous presidents, whether it comes to trade or foreign relations.
“We've trusted politicians for 200 years to run our country,” Owens said. “It's time to give someone else a shot.”
With polls suggesting Florida was firmly in Trump’s grasp, much of the campaign focus turned to Ohio, a perennial fall battleground that was positioned to play a key role in the Republican nominating contest as well.
Trump laid on extra events, including an election-eve rally outside Youngstown in place of a planned Florida appearance, and turned his attention to attacking Kasich after long ignoring the Ohio governor.
He assailed him for his support as a congressman for the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact with Canada and Mexico that, Trump said, devastated the state’s economy. He also laid on personal insults in a bid to snatch a victory in Kasich’s home state and clear the governor from the race.
Kasich, whose strategy centered on staying above the salvos flying between other candidates, accused Trump of creating a “toxic” political atmosphere and, wrapping himself in the establishment mantle, spent Monday stumping alongside Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 nominee.
He also campaigned extensively around the Chicago area in a play for support in Illinois, a state with a tradition of supporting more moderate Republicans.
Giving up on every other contest, Rubio camped out in his home state, conducting what amounted to a Florida-wide apology tour. He repeatedly expressed his regrets for stooping to Trump’s level with jokes about his hair, his artificial tan and, winkingly, the size of his penis.
Rubio insisted that whatever happened Tuesday his campaign would press on, though it would be difficult continuing if he could not even win Florida, another important swing state in the fall.
While others focused on Ohio and Florida, Cruz carved his own path, campaigning throughout Missouri, Illinois and North Carolina.
Before Tuesday, he had won the most states after Trump and trailed him by 90 delegates. His uncompromisingly conservative ideology and go-it-alone stance in Washington have been a large part of his attraction to Republican voters but antagonized many party leaders who believe those qualities limit his appeal in a general election.
At one point, as part of a
divide-to-conquer strategy, Rubio suggested his Ohio supporters back
Kasich in hopes of beating Trump there and slowing his momentum.
But Kasich disavowed the tactic, and Cruz said it was an example of the insider self-dealing he was campaigning against.
“No, we’re not engaged in this delegate-denial strategy that came out of the Washington establishment because they have dreams of a brokered convention, dropping their favorite Washington candidate in to win,” Cruz said on NBC. “That would be a disaster. The people would revolt.”
But Kasich disavowed the tactic, and Cruz said it was an example of the insider self-dealing he was campaigning against.
“No, we’re not engaged in this delegate-denial strategy that came out of the Washington establishment because they have dreams of a brokered convention, dropping their favorite Washington candidate in to win,” Cruz said on NBC. “That would be a disaster. The people would revolt.”
Copyright
© 2016, Los Angeles Times
UPDATES
5:42 p.m.: This story was updated with comments from Rubio.5:27 p.m.: This story was updated to report Rubio dropped out of the race.
5 p.m.: The story was updated to report Trump winning the Florida primary.
4:30 p.m.: The story was updated to report that polls had closed in Ohio and North Carolina.
The story was originally published at 2:10 p.m.
- Marco Rubio
- Elections
- Donald Trump
- 2016 Presidential Election
- Politics and Government
- John Kasich
- Ted Cruz
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