Posted on 12/11/2015 12:00:04 PM PST by Isara
Ted Cruz will embark next week on a splashy swing through many of the states that vote on March 1, an effort to lock down support in those mostly Southern states before turning full attention to the first four voting contests of the 2016 Republican presidential primary.
The Texas senator, flying with staff and his family on a chartered plane, will hit 12 cities in one week, flying from Las Vegas to St. Paul, Minn. on Dec. 17 after the next presidential debate, and wrapping up on Dec. 23 in Oklahoma City. The fly-around tour, dubbed "Take Off with Ted," will feature rally-style events in states including Minnesota, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas and Oklahoma, a highly produced endeavor apparently designed to help voters envision Cruz as a general election contender.
The Cruz campaign for months has worked to make the South its bulwark, embarking on a bus tour there in the summer and building out campaign infrastructure in the Super Tuesday states, a list that includes Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Texas and Oklahoma - places with large evangelical populations, a constituency that Cruz is hoping will coalesce around him.
Even in Democratic-leaning March 1 states like Minnesota, there are conservative Republican delegates up for grabs on that day, and Cruz is angling to lock down as many as possible. Next week's trip is aimed at ginning up enthusiasm that will last into early next year, while Cruz devotes more time to Iowa, South Carolina and the other early primaries and caucuses.
"While everyone else was spending more time in the early states, we balanced our time between the early and March 1 states," Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler said of the campaign's activities over the summer, which at the time drew skepticism from Iowans who thought Cruz should have been spending more time in the first states to vote. "Now we want to go back to those places where we have grown organizations and remind people that the March 1 states are going to be key, all of these states are going to be key, to securing the nomination."
Cruz is rising in Iowa and national polls, but generally lags behind Donald Trump, sometimes by double digits in national surveys. But his allies hope that a strong performance in the Iowa caucuses, where he is looking increasingly competitive, will catapult him to a good showing in South Carolina, making him a serious force in the March 1 states.
"The way the calendar works, all of these states go on March 1, giving them a very large say in who will be the nominee," Tyler said. "We've spent a lot of time building organization there, a lot of time visiting those states, and while a lot of our opponents have a single-state strategy, we've been running a national campaign. After the early states, we'll be prepared to go to the March 1 states not only with the message but with the organization we've now built out, and the money to sustain it."
At the end of the last fundraising quarter, Cruz had more cash on hand - nearly $14 million - than did any other Republican presidential candidate.
Cruz, who often talks about his campaign strategy with an unusual level of detail, has been open about how central those March 1 contests are to his delegates-focused strategy.
"I believe we're well-positioned to do well across the early primary states, and then I think we are also very well positioned to do incredibly well on March 1, Super Tuesday, the so-called SEC primary," Cruz told supporters earlier this week in Greenville, S.C.
Ticking off the March 1 states, he continued, "That day, I believe, is teed up to be a very, very good day for our campaign. As my campaign manager jokes, his 20-month-old daughter, if you gave her a set of crayons and asked her to color the ideal states for Super Tuesday, you couldn't color a better map in terms of strong, conservative, Southern Baptist, evangelical, veterans, gun-owning, God-loving states."
The full schedule is below, as provided by the campaign:
Dec. 17:
Las Vegas, NV - St. Paul, MN
St. Paul, MN - Richmond, VA
Dec. 18:
Richmond, VA - Atlanta, GA
Atlanta, GA - Savannah, GA
Dec. 19:
Savannah, GA - Mobile, AL
Mobile, AL - Birmingham, AL
Dec. 20:
Birmingham, AL
Dec. 21:
No public events
Dec. 22:
Knoxville, TN - Nashville, TN
Nashville, TN - Little Rock, AR
Little Rock, AR - Tulsa, OK
Dec. 23:
Tulsa, OK - Oklahoma City, OK
Eagles UP!!
He will sweep
Very ambitious campaign schedule, but can the Republican primary voters understand what is at stake? The primary ranks are lessened too by so many disgruntled conservatives who have formally left the party since 2008.
He may as well visit the Mexicans in south Nashville. That is where Obama goes.
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