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Ted Cruz Is Confident of Wisconsin Win Over Donald Trump on Tuesday
| Wall Street Journal | - |
KENOSHA,
Wis.—As Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump finished campaign sprints across
Wisconsin on Monday, the Texan appeared on the verge of his first
primary victory in more than a month over the Republican presidential
front-runner.
Don't count Donald Trump out 
ENLARGE
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz speaks at a press briefing on Monday in Madison, Wis.
Photo:
Andy Manis/Associated Press
In a jovial mood during a campaign appearance at the Mars Cheese Castle here on Monday, Mr. Cruz all but predicted a Tuesday victory in between sampling cheese curds, jalapeno cheese bread and cheese popcorn.
“The people of Wisconsin, they are looking at the records of the candidates, and they realize that Donald screams and yells a lot, but he has no solutions,” Mr. Cruz said.
In La Crosse, Wis., on Monday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that the state could deal him only his second primary-state loss since March 1. “It may not happen, because we have the machine against us,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the state’s entire Republican apparatus.
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Mr. Cruz holds double-digit leads in statewide polling, though Mr. Trump is strong in the state’s rural western and northern congressional districts, home to the kinds of rural, economically strained voters who have been strong constituencies for him elsewhere.
On Tuesday, Wisconsin will award 42 delegates to the Republican National Convention, with 24 divided between the state’s eight congressional districts and 14 going to the statewide winner.
Mr. Trump focused his attention on the state’s distant corners, in La Crosse in the southwest along the Minnesota border, and the far north on the shores of Lake Superior.
In Superior, Mr. Trump derided the “never Trump” movement seeking to stop him with a barrage of negative advertising. “If they worked this hard to stop Obama, Obama wouldn’t have had a chance,” the billionaire said.
One challenge for Mr. Cruz, who hasn’t won a primary state since Texas and Oklahoma on March 1, is finding how he could repeat a Wisconsin victory in other states that don’t produce the kinds of headwinds that have slowed Mr. Trump in the last two weeks here.
Mr. Trump has only lost three primary states so far: Texas and Oklahoma, where Mr. Cruz was essentially playing on home turf, and Ohio, where Mr. Kasich mobilized his home-state Republican machine to boost him to victory.
Still, Mr. Cruz, who trailed Mr. Trump in Wisconsin polling conducted weeks ago, before the GOP field winnowed to three candidates, stressed the comeback nature of his candidacy here.
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Capital Journal is WSJ.com’s home for politics, policy and national security news.Campaigning with Mr. Cruz at the cheese shop, onetime rival candidate Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s governor, predicted the state would serve as bellwether for states still to hold nominating contests. “You could start to see a shift of momentum, of people starting to open up the door to see who Ted is,” he said. “My hope would be as this race narrows down, that people will be paying more attention.”
But for Mr. Cruz, the political mechanics in Wisconsin are more like Ohio than the next states on the calendar: the Northeastern states of New York on April 19, then Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island a week later. Those states have fewer conservatives and more moderate Republicans.
Write to Reid J. Epstein at Reid.Epstein@wsj.com and Janet Hook at janet.hook@wsj.com
