Washington Post: “Cruz is the disciplined strategist who stays relentlessly on message and runs a by-the-book organization filled with aides and state chairs … Trump, by contrast, runs what amounts to a DIY presidential campaign.”
“While the approach has left Trump with little established infrastructure as the race turns into a brawl for delegates, it has also allowed him to be nimble.”
“You certainly can’t offer anything which would be considered a bribe. We can’t give them $100,000.”
— Trump aide Ed Brookover, quoted by the Washington Post, refusing to rule out that the campaign may entertain delegates at one of Trump’s resorts.
RealClearPolitics: “Two seemingly innocuous details buried in the Republican rules give blue district voters a large amount of leverage. First, each congressional district — no matter how big, small, liberal, conservative, urban or rural — gets three delegates. Second, the RNC let states set many of their own rules, so in some states (e.g. California and New York) those three delegates are allotted according to the result in that district rather than statewide.”
“That means that heavily Republican districts award the same number of delegates as districts that are packed with Democrats.”
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“Colorado is not going well for Donald Trump. After a shake-up at the top this week in which Trump empowered Paul Manafort to manage the campaign’s troubled delegate operation, Sen. Ted Cruz swept a third straight Congressional District convention Thursday night. All three delegates selected were listed on a slate put forward by the Cruz campaign,” MSNBC reports.
“Trump aides concede that Colorado is not a promising state, but the level of disorganization at Thursday’s event suggested problems that ran deeper than the top-line results.”
First Read: “More Colorado GOP delegates will be selected today before Saturday’s state convention, where an additional 13 delegates will be picked. And if last night was any indication — as well as what happened in North Dakota last weekend — it’s possible Cruz wins all of them.”
A super PAC aligned with Gov. John Kasich is up with a new advertisement slamming Sen. Ted Cruz ahead of New York’s primary next week.
A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds that 7 in 10 people, including close to half of Republican voters, have an unfavorable view of Donald Trump.
“It’s an opinion shared by majorities of men and women; young and old; conservatives, moderates and liberals; and whites, Hispanics and blacks — a devastatingly broad indictment of the billionaire businessman.”
Donald Trump announced that he is reorganizing his campaign, giving an expanded role to veteran strategist Paul Manafort, the Washington Post reports.
“With a growing possibility that Trump will not arrive at July’s GOP convention having the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination on the first ballot, his campaign will have to put more emphasis on the nuts-and-bolts, ground-level organizing at which his closest rival, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, has excelled.”
“That includes assuring that the delegates, many of whom will be picked in coming weeks at district and state conventions around the country, are people who will be loyal to Trump if the convention goes beyond a first ballot in selecting a nominee.”
Chris Cillizza: “Trump is not a dumb man. He didn’t get to where he is … by not grasping when things are slipping away from him … [T]he writing appears to be on the wall. Manafort will run things going forward.”
A new Field Poll in California finds Donald Trump leading the GOP presidential race with 39%, followed by Ted Cruz at 32% and John Kasich at 18%.
Key finding: “The poll finds Trump holding the lead among likely GOP primary voters in two regions – the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area, and those living in the nine-county Southern California region outside of Los Angeles County. Cruz is preferred over Trump among voters in Los Angeles County and those living in the state’s vast, but sparsely populated interior that includes the Central Valley and the Sierra mountain region.”
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders 47% to 41%.
Washington Post: “West Virginia looks perfect for Donald Trump: a struggling working-class state filled with the types of voters who have backed him elsewhere and could deliver one of his biggest victories. But a sweep there might not matter. That’s because as many as 34 delegates — the entire contingent — may be free to back whomever they want at the Republican National Convention.”
“Much the same is true in Pennsylvania, home to a hotly contested April 26 primary, where there are 57 uncommitted delegates. Other states and territories, from Colorado to Wyoming to Guam, will also send squads of unbound representatives.”
Paul Krugman: “It’s one thing for the Sanders campaign to point to Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street connections, which are real, although the question should be whether they have distorted her positions, a case the campaign has never even tried to make. But recent attacks on Mrs. Clinton as a tool of the fossil fuel industry are just plain dishonest, and speak of a campaign that has lost its ethical moorings.”
“Holding people accountable for their past is O.K., but imposing a standard of purity, in which any compromise or misstep makes you the moral equivalent of the bad guys, isn’t. Abraham Lincoln didn’t meet that standard; neither did F.D.R. Nor, for that matter, has Bernie Sanders (think guns).”
“The Sanders campaign has brought out a lot of idealism and energy that the progressive movement needs. It has also, however, brought out a streak of petulant self-righteousness among some supporters. Has it brought out that streak in the candidate, too?”
Gallup: “Seven in 10 Democrats have a positive view of each of their party’s two contenders. Clinton has a little more negative baggage, with a 26% unfavorable rating compared with Sanders’ 13%. Sanders has a somewhat higher percentage responding ‘Never heard of/Don’t have an opinion.’ But they are both well-liked.”
“This is significantly different from the Republican side, where the percentage of Republicans who like Donald Trump is 55% and those who like Ted Cruz is 52%. Plus, Trump’s unfavorable rating among Republicans is 40%, while Cruz’s is almost as high at 38%.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, “an enthusiastic fan Pope Francis’s work, plans to step off the campaign trail next week to speak at a conference hosted by the Vatican on social, economic and environmental issues,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Sanders: “I am grateful to the Vatican for inviting me to talk about an issue that is very dear to my heart, which is how we create a moral economy that works for all of the people rather than just the top one percent.”
“Sen. Ted Cruz will hold two rallies in California on Monday, his first public appearances in the state since it became clear that its June 7 primary is critical in the Texas senator’s effort to win the GOP nomination,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“But his public appearances on Monday, in the midst of the New York primary and just shy of two months before the California primary, underscore the long odds he faces in the Empire State and the importance of California in his effort to stop front-runner Donald Trump.”
“Michigan Republican Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel said Thursday she will pledge her national delegate vote to presidential front-runner Donald Trump since the New York billionaire won last month’s primary,” the Detroit News reports.
“The state chairwoman’s Trump pledge comes after her uncle, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, mounted a concerted national effort to deny Trump the nomination.”
“Ted Cruz’s campaign is setting some awfully high expectations for Donald Trump in New York: Get at least 50 percent, or drop out of the presidential race,” Politico reports.
Said Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe: “If he doesn’t get over 50 percent, he should probably consider dropping out, like everyone else has when they don’t win their home state in a dramatic fashion.”
“For the first time in 40 years, a presidential candidate will appear at Colorado’s Republican Assembly, a sign of how arcane and obscure rules governing delegates in some states may lead the party to a contested national convention in July,” Bloomberg reports.
“Texas Senator Ted Cruz, fresh from a triumph in Wisconsin, will appeal to the faithful Saturday in Colorado Springs as he seeks to load the state’s complement of 37 delegates with his supporters. He’s already won six and has an extensive grassroots operation orchestrated by Colorado’s Tea Party network. It’s a center of strength for a candidate who has married fervent conservatism, legal acumen and a bent for organization.”
New York Times: “He would allow individuals to take tax deductions for insurance premium payments. But aides acknowledge that this tax break would not be worth much to people whose income is so low they pay little or nothing in federal income taxes. For them, Trump aides say, there would be Medicaid, which the billionaire businessman says he would not cut but would turn into a block grant to state governments.”
“This whipsaw of ideas is exasperating Republican experts on health care, who call his proposals an incoherent mishmash that could jeopardize coverage for millions of newly insured people. But for Mr. Trump’s campaign, such criticism appears only to bolster the candidate’s outsider status.”
Sen. Ted Cruz said that an apology for calling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar “ain’t gonna happen,” The Hill reports.
Said Cruz: “If the Washington lobbyists want to see that happen, they can hold their breath a long, long time.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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