Rivals desperate, Trump says

Kasich, Cruz deny collusion; Sanders vows to stay in race

Republican presidential candidate Ohio Gov. John Kasich speaks at a campaign event Monday at Thomas Farms Community Center in Rockville, Md.
Republican presidential candidate Ohio Gov. John Kasich speaks at a campaign event Monday at Thomas Farms Community Center in Rockville, Md.

BORDEN, Ind. -- Declaring the Republican presidential contest at "a fork in the road," Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Gov. John Kasich defended their new alliance on Monday as the party's last, best chance to stop Donald Trump, even as the New York businessman surged toward another big delegate haul.

photo

AP

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump greets supporters after speaking at a campaign rally Monday at West Chester University in West Chester, Pa.

photo

AP

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a campaign rally Monday at Fitzgerald Fieldhouse on the University of Pittsburgh campus in Pittsburgh.

Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign chief vowed that his candidate will stay in the Democratic race until the summer convention, even as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looked to lock down her lead for the party's nomination with a strong performance in a five-state round of contests.

Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Rhode Island hold primaries today.

Trump, the Republican front-runner, lashed out at what he called collusion by desperate rivals, intensifying his attacks on the GOP presidential nomination system on the eve of the primaries in the Northeast.

"If you collude in business, or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail," Trump said as he campaigned in Rhode Island. "But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics you're allowed to collude."

"It shows how pathetic they are," Trump said of his Republican rivals.

On Monday, both candidates swatted away questions about whether the agreement was one of desperation.

Kasich grew quickly agitated at the suggestion: "Me? No, I'm not desperate -- are you?" he asked a reporter. "Are you desperate? Because I'm not."

And Cruz denied that the effort to stop Trump was subverting the will of the people.

"This is entirely about the will of the people," he said. "This is about winning the votes of the Hoosier State."

Cruz and Kasich announced the terms of an unprecedented agreement late Sunday night to coordinate primary strategies in three of the 15 remaining primary states.

Kasich will step back in the May 3 Indiana contest to let Cruz bid without interference for voters who don't like Trump. Cruz will do the same for Kasich in subsequent contests in Oregon and New Mexico.

Trump is the only Republican candidate who can clinch the GOP presidential nomination before his party's national convention. Yet his path is narrow.

He needs to win at least four of the five Northeastern states that vote today. He enters the day with 845 delegates, 392 short of the 1,237 needed to represent his party in the general election in November.

There are a total of 172 delegates up for grabs. If Trump can win Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut and Delaware, he can walk away with 92.

Eliminated from reaching a majority of delegates in the primaries, Cruz and Kasich can only hope to block Trump from reaching a majority -- and a first-round convention victory -- and thus force a contested convention where delegates could select a different nominee.

Ignoring the Northeast on Monday, Cruz insisted, "We are at a fundamental fork in the road," as he campaigned in Indiana.

"It is big news today that John Kasich has decided to pull out of Indiana to give us a head-to-head contest with Donald Trump," he told reporters. "That is good for the men and women of Indiana. It's good for the country to have a clear and direct choice."

The deal was greeted with skepticism by those in Indiana who believed there was a better chance it would create a backlash and help Trump, instead of changing the dynamics in the race for Cruz.

"Hoosier voters," said Brian Howey, publisher of the nonpartisan Howey Politics Indiana newsletter, "don't really like people telling them who to vote for."

Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard, one of Kasich's campaign co-chairmen in the state, said he wouldn't tell Indiana Republicans how they should vote. "Voters are smart, and they'll figure out what they need to do," Brainard said. "What we're not doing is splitting the voters that understand that Trump can't win in the fall."

Instead, Brainard repeated Kasich's talking points, saying the Ohio governor is the only candidate who can defeat Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, in the fall and unite the Republican Party.

The deal also irritated supporters who already had cast ballots in the state. About 83,700 voters participated in both the Republican and Democratic races as of Friday, about twice as many as at the same time four years ago, according to data from the Indiana secretary of state's office.

"This election is garbage," state Rep. David Ober, a Republican from northeast Indiana, said after the Cruz-Kasich deal was announced. "I voted early and then they cut a deal a week before election day."

Kasich sent mixed messages as he addressed the pact for the first time while campaigning in Philadelphia. Asked what Indiana voters should do next week, the Ohio governor urged them to vote for him.

"I've never told them not to vote for me. They ought to vote for me," Kasich said just 13 hours after promising to give Cruz "a clear path" in Indiana. He said he had simply agreed not to spend "resources" in Indiana.

While Kasich's campaign canceled his public appearances in the state, the governor was still scheduled to visit Indianapolis today for a fundraising event at the Columbia Club. And he still had meetings scheduled with a series of Indiana Republicans, including Gov. Mike Pence, according to a leading Republican in the state.

Clinton assails Trump

Trump was the target on the Democratic side as Clinton seeks primary victories today that she hopes will all but seal her victory over Sanders.

The former secretary of state ignored the senator from Vermont as she campaigned in Delaware, assailing Trump as being out of touch with average Americans.

"Come out of those towers named after yourself and actually talk and listen to people," Clinton told a Delaware crowd, as if talking to him. "Don't just fly that big jet in and land it and go make a big speech and insult everybody you can think of." She was addressing more than 900 people in a Wilmington theater.

Clinton has the chance of a clean sweep or at least multiple victories today that could all but foreclose Sanders' narrow path to the nomination. But Sanders' campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, said the millions of dollars flowing to Sanders and the boisterous rallies show that his "supporters will stand with us all the way to the end."

Asked whether he expects a contested national Democratic convention, Weaver told reporters in Connecticut, "Absolutely, 100 percent." Weaver said, "This is a powerful movement he's built, and we're going to take it to the convention."

Today's contests offer 384 delegates, who will be divided proportionally based on the outcome. After her New York victory, Clinton has a lead of more than 200 delegates won in primaries and caucuses. Including superdelegates, the party leaders and elected officials who may choose any candidate, Clinton's lead stands at 1,944 to 1,192 for Sanders, according to an Associated Press count. That means she has 82 percent of the 2,383 delegates needed to win the nomination.

At a Hartford rally with more than 1,800 people, Sanders drew distinctions with Clinton on the minimum wage, his call for a carbon tax to address climate change, fracking and more.

Sanders moved on to a rally at a field house on the University of Pittsburgh campus, where he told a crowd of more than 1,000 that young and poorer people need to vote in higher numbers if anything is to change.

"That means every person here has got to understand that you are very, very powerful people if you choose to exercise that right," Sanders said.

At a town hall-style meeting Monday night, Clinton said she won't bend over backward to win over Sanders supporters.

"Let's look at where we are right now. ... I am winning," Clinton told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and a crowd of about 200 people gathered at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. "And I am winning because of what I stand for."

Sanders, in his own town hall-style event before the same crowd but a different host, Chris Hayes, said Clinton would have to reconsider that stance if she is to win over those who have emphatically backed him as the anti-establishment candidate. He said he couldn't snap his fingers and make those voters side with her.

"It is incumbent on Clinton," Sanders said, "to reach out not only to my supporters but to all the American people with an agenda that they believe will represent the interests of working families, low-income people, middle class, those of us who are concerned about the environment, and not just big-money interests."

Of course, Sanders said, that applies only "if we end up losing -- and I hope we do not."

Information for this article was contributed by Steve Peoples, Will Weissert, Kathleen Ronayne, Errin Haines Whack, Jill Colvin, Catherine Lucey, Stephen Ohlemacher, Susan Haigh, Ken Thomas and Joe Mandak of The Associated Press; by Jose A. DelReal of The Washington Post; by Alexander Burns, Matt Flegenheimer, Jonathan Martin, Thomas Kaplan and Ashley Parker of The New York Times; by Michael C. Bender and Mark Niquette of Bloomberg News; and by Tricia L. Nadolny of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

A Section on 04/26/2016

Upcoming Events