Sen. Ted Cruz and his running mate Carly Fiorina head West to speak at the California GOP convention. Follow our live coverage.
- Ahead of Tuesday’s Indiana primary, Cruz nabbed the endorsement of Gov. Mike Pence
- Bernie Sanders drops lawsuit against the DNC
- Donald Trump stumps in Indiana after sparking protests in California
Ted Cruz’s attack on Trump donations falls flat for some
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz attacked Donald Trump in a speech to the state’s Republican Party on Saturday for his history of making campaign contributions to Democratic candidates in California.
Though it’s unclear how effective the line of attack will be, some GOP supporters were willing to give Trump a pass. After all, they said, he is a businessman.
Marcia Gilchrist, a 79-year-old retiree from Orange, said she already knew about the contributions and wasn’t fazed by them.
“I don’t know if he really supports them or if he was buying favors. I guess for him, it is favors,” she said. “I do think people need to know that.”
She said she planned to vote for Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Trump gave three of California’s top Democrats -- Gov. Jerry Brown, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris -- a combined $12,000. The total wasn’t enough to worry Mary Elsbree, an undecided voter from Marin County.
“He is a businessman; he is going to be giving to many candidates,” she said. “It makes Cruz look bad by pointing it out. [Trump] wasn’t running for public office at the time.”
The two echoed Trump’s own defense of his contributions.
“I gave to many people,” he said at the first GOP debate in Simi Valley last year. “Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that’s a broken system.”
Trump supporter Alice Schoessow of Monterey said the candidates could have turned down Trump’s donations.
“I didn’t see any of them refusing his money,” she said.
“He doesn’t need the money. He was his own power. His name is power,” she said of the Republican front-runner.
Snapshot from the trail: John Kasich in San Jose
Cruz on Californians: â€Y’all are used to being treated by Republicans like an ATM’
GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz on Saturday predicted a fierce battle in California, with the state’s June 7 primary deciding the Republican nominee.
“Who would have thunk it? Year after year, y’all are used to being treated by Republicans like an ATM to take your money and spend it in other states,” Cruz told hundreds of Republicans gathered at their state party convention. “Well, I can tell you right now we’re going to spend more money in California than we raise in California. … It will be a battle on the ground.”
Cruz was introduced by former Gov. Pete Wilson, who announced his endorsement of the Texas senator. Cruz peppered his speech with references to the state, from Californians launching the career of President Ronald Reagan to it being the home state of his wife, Heidi, and the one-time home of his newly announced running mate, Carly Fiorina.
Cruz struck familiar themes, arguing that this election was critical because the balance of the Supreme Court is at stake, and focusing his half-hour of remarks on jobs, freedom and national security. But he added a few California twists, such as slamming the federal government’s reduction of water exports to farms in a bid to save the endangered Delta smelt. The decision has led to the loss of more than 17,000 agricultural jobs, he said.
Cruz argued that if the Endangered Species Act were modified so that developers or farmers were permitted to do their business if they increased a species’ population by a certain amount, rather than having their projects blocked in an effort to save the species in a specific area, it would create a “win-win” solution for all parties.
“You put up a disco ball, play some Barry White, you let nature take its course,” he joked.
Cruz railed against GOP front-runner Donald Trump, who addressed the convention on Friday, and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton as “flip sides of the same coin,” sharing similar positions on issues such as healthcare, Israel and the Iranian nuclear deal.
He also noted that Trump had donated $12,000 to Gov. Jerry Brown, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris, causing the crowd to groan.
“You all are experiencing firsthand the consequences of [their] misguided liberal policies,” Cruz said. “This election is about choices.”
Ted Cruz: California will decide the GOP nominee for president
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told California Republicans on Saturday that the state was at a crossroads where it would decide the party’s nominee for president on June 7.
Candidates usually treat California as an ATM for campaign money, the GOP presidential candidate told a crowd of hundreds at the state party convention in Burlingame.
“We’re going to spend more in California than we’re going to raise in California,” said Cruz, who is scheduled to attend a fundraiser at the Montecito home of CKE Restaurants Chief Executive Andrew Puzder after the convention. “But for any of you who have your checkbooks handy, I would be glad for you to prove me wrong.”
Cruz also played up the California roots of his running mate, Carly Fiorina.
“Carly will be the first Californian on a national ticket since Ronald Reagan,” he said.
President Trump? Oh, he’ll be great, just like his border wall
We have a very beautiful state here.
Absolutely beautiful.
And people are always saying to me, whether they live in California or they’re visiting from somewhere else in the country or the world, hey, this is fantastic. That’s what they say about California. They’ve never seen anything like it.
Did I mention that it’s huge?
This state is very huge, with lots of mountains, gorgeous mountains. We have the best mountains. And of course — I don’t need to tell you — we have the most wonderful beaches in the world.
Ted Cruz makes a push for California, but polls not in his favor
He has selected a running mate and forged a half-baked alliance with a rival -- all this week.
As Texas Sen. Ted Cruz heads to California on Saturday to speak at the state GOP convention, his campaign is in need of a jolt to try to blunt the momentum of front-runner Donald Trump, who this week secured decisive wins in five East Coast primaries.
And, perhaps, California could be Cruz’s best shot.
His campaign has built a statewide network of volunteers and he’s taken the time to allow Republicans in the state to get to know him, appearing often on conservative talk radio in the Central Valley and Southern California.
But those efforts have not been rewarded in surveys of California Republicans.
Several polls of likely Republican voters show Trump in a strong position to win a majority of the 172 delegates in the June 7 primary. An average of three polls from the past month in California has Trump up 17 percentage points over Cruz, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the third candidate in the race.
In California, the vast majority of delegates are awarded -- three at a time -- to the winner of each of the state’s 53 congressional districts. Thirteen at-large delegates go to the candidate who wins statewide.
For Cruz, it’s all about keeping Trump from the coveted 1,237 delegates that would allow the billionaire businessman to secure the GOP nomination. And with Trump ahead of him by more than 400 pledged delegates, and fewer and fewer contests remaining, time and math are not on Cruz’s side.
Pete Wilson: Surprise speaker for Ted Cruz at California GOP gathering
Pete Wilson, the former California governor whose campaign against illegal immigration touched off decades of election troubles for Republicans, will make a surprise appearance Saturday at the state GOP convention on behalf of presidential hopeful Ted Cruz, according to people familiar with the matter.
Wilson arrived Friday night in Burlingame, where the Texas senator will be the featured lunch speaker at the convention hotel near San Francisco International Airport.
In a brief conversation late Friday night, Wilson confirmed he would speak to the gathering on Saturday, but declined to discuss the presidential race. Former governors typically get star billing at a state party convention.
Ron Nehring, the chairman of Cruz’s California campaign, did not respond to requests for comment.
Cruz, who is running behind Donald Trump in polls of likely GOP voters in the state’s June 7 primary, plans to meet privately with some of his potential California delegates Saturday morning.
Trump’s appearance at the convention Friday drew hundreds of protesters, who tossed rocks and eggs at police in riot gear, shoved and spit at supporters of the New York developer and burned him in effigy.
Wilson has had his own troubles at state GOP gatherings, but within his own party. When he was governor in the early 1990s, Republicans tarred-and-feathered an effigy of Wilson to protest a tax increase that he signed to close a big budget gap.
In his 1994 campaign for reelection, Wilson championed Proposition 187, the ballot measure that would have barred public services for immigrants in the country illegally. The backlash severely damaged the Republican Party in California, with growing numbers of Latino and Asian voters siding decisively with Democrats in elections since.
Republicans, including failed gubernatorial hopefuls Meg Whitman in 2010 and Neel Kashkari in 2014, often tout Wilson’s support during primaries, only to see it turned against them in the general election when Democratic rivals use his name to suggest they are hostile to Latinos.
Amid raging protests in Bay Area, Trump calls on California Republicans to unite behind him
Donald Trump, undeterred by protesters who nearly blocked his way into a Republican convention, called on the party Friday to unite behind him even as he lashed out once again at what he portrayed as its corrupt system for picking presidential nominees.
Police in riot gear were overwhelmed by demonstrators who knocked down street barricades and rushed to the entrance of the convention hotel near San Francisco International Airport. As officers scrambled to regain control, Trump’s motorcade pulled over on the shoulder of the 101 Freeway.
Surrounded by Secret Service agents, the New York developer clambered over a concrete barrier and entered the hotel through a back door.
“It felt like I was crossing the border,” Trump joked at a lunch banquet to hundreds of Republicans, who burst into laughter.