INDIANAPOLIS - As voting began Tuesday in Indiana's critical primary, the state appeared poised to move Donald Trump closer to locking up the Republican presidential nomination rather than denying him crucial delegates.
While Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and his allies have used every resource and maneuver at their disposal in the state in a last-ditch effort to block the real estate mogul, voters here said they see the businessman as best positioned to challenge the nation's political establishment.
"He's the only candidate who is really going to change the system. Everyone else is in bed with the Republican leadership," said Justin Stinson, 48, a Bloomington software engineer who voted for Trump at a precinct near Indiana University.
The GOP front-runner wrapped up his campaign across the Hoosier State with characteristic gusto, boasting Monday about his polling lead and endorsements from local celebrities and relishing a fight with likely Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Certain that victory was at hand, Trump predicted Tuesday's balloting would bring the demise of the candidacies of top rivals. From here, he said, it is on to the general election.
"If we win Indiana, it's over," Trump declared at a boisterous Monday afternoon rally in Carnel. "They're finished. They're gone."
In an interview with "Fox & Friends" Tuesday, the billionaire again pounded against Cruz as a symbol of the political establishment and someone who "makes stuff up."
"These people are smart people, and they haven't been taken care of properly by the government," Trump said. "What's going on now is an amazing thing."
Michael Malone, a 48-year old truck driver, proudly cast a vote for Trump in Elkhart and echoed the sentiment that Cruz was pandering to voters.
"In the last 10 days, he came clearer on his foreign policy, and it became more evident that Cruz would say anything to get a vote," said Malone, adding he had backed Trump from the start of his candidacy. "Cruz's dishonesty has been proven again and again. Once Trump is president, and people see him in action, they'll say: 'Okay, we got the good deal.'"
The Indiana primary, with 57 delegates at stake, stands in the minds of many Republicans as the last major hurdle in the way of Trump's nomination.
"They not only put all their chips in the Indiana basket, but they made it clear how desperate they've become. They have tried everything imaginable," said Pete Seat, a well-connected GOP operative here whose firm has advised the campaign of Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the third Republican left in the race. "It feels like this is slipping away from Ted Cruz pretty rapidly."
On the Democratic side, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont was closing in on front-runner Hillary Clinton in recent polls in Indiana.
At a large precinct in Bloomington, 42-year-old Anita Sumner said she voted for Sanders because of his positions on income inequality and other issues.
"I'm not just going to vote for someone who has a realistic chance of winning," said Sumner, a receptionist for a Bloomington financial company.
But Sumner, like other Sanders backer, Indiana Univesity staffer Kathy Wyss, said she would not hesitate to back Clinton if she became the Democratic nominee.
Clinton's experience, as well as her ability to forge consensus and more practical views on education, were a selling point for Paula Stapley, a retired criminal defense paralegal.
With Clinton far ahead in delegate count, a Sanders win here is unlikely to affect the ultimate outcome of the nomination.
On a frenetic final day of campaigning here, Cruz faced uncomfortable questions about the viability of his floundering candidacy. Although he previously held up Indiana as a must-win state, the Texas senator argued Monday that he could sustain a loss and still force a contested party convention and wrest the nomination from Trump in Cleveland.
The last two public polls here showed Trump with double-digit leads over Cruz. Kasich - who brokered a stop-Trump deal with Cruz to bow out of Indiana so long as Cruz cedes upcoming contests in Oregon and New Mexico - is running a distant third.
Trump has been buoyed in Indiana by two main forces. First, his populist message about trade deals that hurt workers and a "rigged" and "corrupt" political system has resonated in a state whose manufacturing economy is hollowing out. All spring, Trump has hammered Carrier for shuttering its Indianapolis furnace factory and relocating to Mexico - a plant closing that has gotten considerable local news attention.
Mark Laine, a 54-year-old electrical engineer in Indianapolis, said he backed the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s. But after setting up systems in China - and then coming home to see factories leave - he said he liked Trump's promise to overhaul the trade deals President Obama has negotiated.
"He says what he means, just like I do," Laine said. "I was for NAFTA. I was for free rade. Now I"m like: Holy, crap, what did we do?"
Trump also is benefiting from his newfound aura of inevitability. Nine in 10 Republicans now think Trump will be their party's nominee, according to a CNN-ORC national poll released Monday.
"You cannot underestimate the impact that Trump winning all counties last week in the 'Acela primary' had on Indiana," veteran GOP strategist Scott Reed said, referring to five Northeast primaries that Trump swept. "A month ago, Cruz was leading Trump by 20 per cent in Indiana. Trump's wins, coupled with landing his plane in state, has driven voters into his column."
Cruz came face-to-face with the forces working against him outside a campaign stop in Marion, where he approached a handful of Trump supporters who had been heckling him from across the street with jeers like "Lyin' Ted" and "Hey, Cruz, do the math."
Cruz appraoched and engaged the demonstrators. One of them told hiim, "Indiana don't want you."
"Sir, America is a better country -" Cruz said, at which point the man interrupted to say: "Without you."
In Osceola, where Cruz shook every hand at the Bravo Cafe, he told reporters that the election in Indiana was boiling down to a choice between crudeness and decency - "a choice about our national character" that Hoosiers could get right.
"I trust the good people of Indiana to differentiate," Cruz said. "We are not a country built on hatred. We are not a country built on anger, built on pettiness. We are not a country built on bullying. We are not a country about selfishness."
The sparring between the top two Republican contenders took a bizzare turn Tuesday, when Trump suggested on Fox that voters should ignore attacks from the senator's father because he was spotted with Lee Harvey Oswald around the time of the murder of President John F. Kennedy.
"His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald being, you know, shot," Trump said during a telephone interview. "I mean the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this? Right? Prior to his being shot. And nobody even brings it up. I mean, they don't even talk about that - that was reported. And nobody talks about it."
Trump seemed to be talking about a photo published last month by the National Enquirer that shows Oswald and another man distributing pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans in 1963. The tabloid claims that the second man in Rafael Cruz, the senator's Cuban-born father, an explosive accusation that has not been corroborated.
Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier dismissed the accusation in a statement Monday, saying "the media is willfully enabling" Trump "to cheapen to value of our democratic process."
"Trump is detached from reality, and his false, cheap, meaningless comments every day indicated his desperation to get attention and willingness to say anything to do so," she said.
Ken Nich, a Bloomington resident who works in sales, said he voted for the senator Tuesday in part because "he's more civil than the other candidates," adding that Trump is not "president as far as his rhetoric. He doesn't seem to be as nice of a person."
However, when asked if he would support Trump if he becomes the GOP nominee, Nich added: "Sure, I would vote for him>"
And the fact that Cruz and Kasich forged a non-compete agreement in states including Indiana irritated voters, such as Stinson, even though it fell apart.
"Everything else that has been done to stop him is anti-democratic," he said. "Why would you vote for a candidate who is depriving the people of their franchise?"
Source: Washington Post
