Indiana is the only place that can save the GOP from a Trump takeover

The only thing that can save the Republican party from a Donald Trump takeover is Indiana. On the heels of Trump’s resounding win in five states on Tuesday night, anti-Trump Republicans need Ted Cruz to take the Hoosier State to stop the frontrunner from accumulating the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination and avoid a contested convention this summer. There are now just 10 states left in the Republican primaries, five of them voting on the final critical night of Tuesday 7 June. Of the five states going to the polls in May, Indiana has the biggest delegate haul. Indiana’s demographics make it appealing to both Trump and Cruz. Its industrial north-west borders Chicago, and as in parts of Illinois manufacturing jobs have slowly disappeared over the past 30 years. In the largest city in the region, Gary, nearly 20% of the population did not have a high school diploma or GED in 2010. In southern Indiana, conservative politics dominate, and the legacy of “Copperheads” – Indianans who fought for or sympathized with the Confederacy – is still felt around the region. Trump may also face awkward questions about his personal legacy in the state. The businessman once owned a riverboat casino in Gary, an industrial town on Lake Michigan, and the region briefly viewed him as a potential economic savior. He created some jobs with the casino, which he sold in 2005, but never followed through on a promise to renovate a crumbling hotel in the city’s downtown area. “There certainly have been some critical articles about Trump’s business practices in the north-west part of the state, certainly with the casinos,” said Tom Wheeler, a member of Cruz’s state team. But he was not sure if that history would make a difference: “I don’t know how many people read that.” Public polling in Indiana has Cruz about seven points behind Trump, 33% to 40%. The third candidate in the race, John Kasich, accounts for roughly 20% of the vote, despite a pact he made with Cruz to vacate the state in the hope of consolidating anti-Trump support. The stakes in Indiana are so high that Cruz made a desperate gamble this week to lure conservatives away from Trump by declaring Carly Fiorina would be his running mate. The announcement of a running mate nearly three months before the convention is unprecedented in modern US history and represents a throw of the dice to try to capture media attention and boost Cruz in the polls. Trump isn’t taking a victory lap. On Wednesday, at a rally in Indianapolis, he rolled out the endorsement of Bobby Knight, the beloved but controversial former coach of the Indiana University basketball team. The coach of three national championship teams, Knight became nearly as famous for his violent outbursts as his coaching: he was fired amid allegations of assault and once threw a chair on to the court in the middle of a game. Trump basked in this endorsement from “a winner” and dismissed Cruz. “Cruz can’t win, what’s he doing picking a vice-president?” Trump asked a crowd of several thousand. “On television they say he has no path to victory. He’s mathematically eliminated.” Without much of a choice, the Texas senator has embraced the role of David to Trump’s Goliath. On Tuesday night, he held a rally in the high school gym where the basketball movie Hoosiers was filmed, and Cruz cast himself as a scrappy underdog who overcomes huge odds. “That basketball ring here in Indiana is the same height as it is in New York City,” he said, incorrectly quoting an inspirational line about basketball hoops from the film. Cruz blamed the media for promoting Trump and felt confident that beginning in Indiana, “this campaign moves back towards more favorable terrain”. He tried to lump Trump with Hillary Clinton, calling them “New York liberal[s]” who believe “grown men should use the little girls’ restroom”, an allusion to a controversial North Carolina law that overturns rules about discrimination against transgender people. Anti-Trump Republicans have questioned the businessman’s conservative beliefs for months, to little avail, but Cruz is hoping that Indiana is conservative enough to make the strategy work. In 2012 voters there elected a Tea Party challenger over a six-term senator, in part because of a push from the party’s right wing, and pro-Cruz forces are hoping to rekindle that spirit. They have combined to spend over $4m on ads against Trump, compared to $960,000 spent by the frontrunner on television ads. Advertisement Pressure by anti-Trump forces led the state’s governor, Mike Pence, to endorse the Texas senator on Friday, albeit with little enthusiasm. In a radio interview, Pence said: “I’m not against anybody, but I will be voting for Ted Cruz in the Republican primary.” Facing his own re-election bid in November, Pence took pains to make positive comments about Cruz’s top rival. “I particularly want to commend Donald Trump,” Pence said. He singled out the frontrunner highlighting the decision of air conditioning manufacturer Carrier to move jobs from Indiana to Mexico.” “Indiana is crucial to the outcome of the race,” David McIntosh, the president of a major conservative political action committee, Club for Growth, told the Guardian. A former Indiana congressman, McIntosh said the primary has “consolidated into a two-man race. That gives Cruz a very good chance to win it.” In McIntosh’s view, the candidates need two steps – victories in Indiana and California – to have any chance at the nomination. “Trump’s claim to be a winner just isn’t true, he’s got 35-40%” of the vote, he said. “Trump needs to win Indiana to nail it down on the first ballot.” A leader in the Republican cause against Trump, Club for Growth has also been running anti-Kasich ads in Indiana since before the Cruz-Kasich pact. The group argues that a vote for Kasich is a vote for Trump, and said it would “continue to be making that point” while also criticizing Trump for “not being a conservative”. Thanks for reading.

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