{"id":146792,"date":"2016-04-26T08:51:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T14:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=146792"},"modified":"2016-10-12T13:10:59","modified_gmt":"2016-10-12T19:10:59","slug":"cruz-kasich-deal-to-stop-trump-may-not-mean-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/04\/cruz-kasich-deal-to-stop-trump-may-not-mean-much\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruz-Kasich deal to stop Trump may not mean much"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joy Gruben of Las Cruces is planning to vote for Ted Cruz in New Mexico’s Republican presidential primary in spite\u00a0of a\u00a0deal Cruz has with opponent John Kasich to not compete here.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_146677\" class=\"wp-caption module image alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 336px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Kasich#\/media\/File:John_Kasich_photo.png\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-146677 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Kasich-John-336x293.jpg\" alt=\"John Kasich\" width=\"336\" height=\"293\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Kasich-John-336x293.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Kasich-John-768x669.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Kasich-John-771x671.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Kasich-John-1170x1019.jpg 1170w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Kasich-John.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 336px) 100vw, 336px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Gage Skidmore \/ Creative Commons<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">In New Mexico, GOP delegates are awarded proportionately — it’s not a winner-take-all state — so the deal probably wouldn’t help John Kasich, shown here, much anyway. (<a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0\/\" target=\"_blank\">photo cc info<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The agreement\u00a0Cruz and Kasich <a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/04\/candidates-deal-to-stop-trump-could-bring-attention-to-new-mexico\/\" target=\"_blank\">announced Sunday<\/a>,\u00a0aimed at stopping Donald Trump from securing the GOP\u00a0nomination before the party\u2019s\u00a0convention in July, had Kasich agreeing to leave the May 3 Indiana primary to Cruz. In exchange, Cruz agreed to not compete in Oregon, whose primary is May 17, and New Mexico, whose primary is June 7.<\/p>\n<p>Gruben’s determination to vote for Cruz anyway captured the fragility of the situation as Trump’s opponents make a last-ditch effort to try to stop him before the convention — but\u00a0have formed a shaky alliance many say will have little\u00a0effect.<\/p>\n<p>Neither Cruz nor Kasich can win enough delegates to secure the nomination before the GOP convention in Cleveland, so their only hope is a contested convention.<\/p>\n<p>“I’m not sure it’s really going to make much difference – and I’m not even sure why Kasich is still in the race,” Gruben said\u00a0in a discussion <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/nmpolitics\/posts\/998674656834925?comment_id=998711250164599&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R6%22%7D\" target=\"_blank\">on Facebook<\/a>. Kasich is a far distant third in the race.<\/p>\n<p>Trump is expected to win several state primaries in the Northeast <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2016\/04\/26\/cruz-braces-defeat-northeast\/\" target=\"_blank\">on Tuesday.<\/a>\u00a0He still has a chance to reach\u00a01,237 delegates and secure\u00a0the GOP nomination before the convention, so\u00a0Cruz and Kasich see defeating Trump in Indiana as essential. Cruz had a better shot, which is why Kasich agreed to not campaign, at least publicly, in Indiana\u00a0in exchange for Cruz not publicly campaigning\u00a0for a roughly equal number of delegates in Oregon and New Mexico.<\/p>\n<p>Whether voters in New Mexico and the other two states would follow the lead of Cruz and Kasich wasn’t the only question raised Monday. Some said the deal gave credibility to Trump’s claim that the system is rigged and could backfire.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>And there were questions about how committed the two candidates are\u00a0to the alliance, which by midday Monday was\u00a0“fraying almost to the point of irrelevance,” in the words of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/04\/26\/us\/politics\/ted-cruz-john-kasich-donald-trump.html\" target=\"_blank\">The New York Times<\/a>. Hours after announcing the deal, Kasich said people in Indiana “ought to vote for me”\u00a0even if he doesn’t\u00a0publicly campaign there. “I don\u2019t see this as any big deal,” he said.<\/p>\n<p>And the Cruz campaign said\u00a0it wasn’t telling Republicans\u00a0in New Mexico and Oregon to vote for Kasich.\u00a0\u201cWe never tell voters who to vote for,\u201d the campaign clarified.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re simply letting folks know where we will be focusing our time and resources.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In New Mexico, the state Republican Party said it wanted Cruz to campaign here along with Kasich and Trump.<\/p>\n<p>“We believe that every campaign should fight to win in New Mexico,” said GOP spokesman Tucker Keene, “because whoever our nominee is, the experience of campaigning in and organizing in a swing state like New Mexico would help defeat Hillary Clinton here in November.”<\/p>\n<p>In New Mexico, GOP delegates are awarded proportionately — it’s not a winner-take-all state — so the deal probably wouldn’t help Kasich much here anyway.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, while the alliance between Cruz and Kasich brings attention to New Mexico — <a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/04\/candidates-deal-to-stop-trump-could-bring-attention-to-new-mexico\/\" target=\"_blank\">our article<\/a> on the deal had 5,800 reads from around the country\u00a0on Monday — it may not matter much beyond that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joy Gruben of Las Cruces is planning to vote for Ted Cruz in New Mexico’s Republican presidential primary in spite of a deal Cruz has with opponent John Kasich to not compete here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":146677,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[708,3307,226,194,116],"class_list":["post-146792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-2016-election","tag-donald-trump","tag-presidential-race","tag-republican-party","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}