LA PORTE, Indiana — Back in the part of the country where he last lost to Ted Cruz, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is confidently pushing for a win on Tuesday in Indiana that he argues ought to knock the Texas senator out of the race.
Buoyed by a sweep of last week’s primary elections along the East Coast, the billionaire businessman appears to have learned a few lessons from his defeat last month to the Texas senator in nearby Wisconsin.
There have been no slip-ups on talk radio in recent days, nor stumbles over issues that matter deeply to Republican voters.
Trump arrived in Indianapolis to start campaigning the day after winning his home-state New York primary weeks ago and began spending money on television advertising far sooner than he did in Wisconsin.
Addressing a cheering crowd at a Sunday rally in Terre Haute, the first of four events in Indiana over the final two days before Tuesday’s election, Trump bragged: “If we win here, it’s over, OK?“
Not quite, as the New York real estate mogul can’t win enough delegates Tuesday to clinch the Republican nomination. But after his wins in five states last week, Trump no longer needs to win a majority of the remaining delegates at stake in the remaining primaries to lock up the GOP nomination.
Cruz has no such cushion. Already eliminated from reaching 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination outright, he desperately needs a victory in Indiana to keep Trump from that number and press ahead with his strategy of claiming the nomination at a contested convention in Cleveland this summer. — AP
