There’s probably no primary battle that’s more personal than Tuesday’s New York vote.
Bernie Sanders grew up playing stickball in Brooklyn's gritty streets, and Hillary Clinton launched her political career here as a U.S. senator. Donald Trump has an iconic tower in Midtown Manhattan bearing his name, and few attacks seemed to get under his skin more than when Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz assaulted his "New York values."
For the four candidates, along with Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Tuesday’s contest in New York also holds another distinction: It matters for both parties for the first time in decades.
For Clinton and Trump, who both hold solid leads in polls, the Empire State’s vote offers a tantalizing chance at a dominant victory that could stop their rivals in their tracks. And for their challengers, it’s a chance to pick off a few delegates to further complicate the front-runners’ paths to nomination — and perhaps pull off an upset of their own.
At stake are 95 Republican delegates and a whopping 247 Democratic delegates, and both Trump and Clinton are counting on dominating wins here and in upcoming contests in Pennsylvania, California and other vote-rich states.
In the Republican contest, Cruz and Kasich hope to block Trump from cracking 50 percent in each of the state's 27 congressional districts, which would allow him to sweep all the New York delegates up for grabs. They've homed in on conservative parts of upstate New York still battered by the economic downturn in search of frustrated Republican voters.
Cruz, though, has struggled to account for his “New York values” attack against Trump in the Iowa contest. He’s faced repeated questions about it, including at a town hall meeting Monday on “Good Morning America” where he downplayed the remarks.
“The people of New York, you have all suffered under the left-wing policies year after year,” he said, adding: “We don’t want to nominate someone who is a loser in November. If Donald Trump gets the nomination, Hillary Clinton wins.”
Kasich, drawing modest crowds in events across the state, has stuck with his plan as a sunnier alternative to Trump and Cruz. At campaign events, he urged New York Republicans not to venture down a “path of darkness” by giving in to fear-mongering and divisive rhetoric.
But this is Trump's contest to lose, and he's drawn enthusiastic crowds at events in the Republican bastions of Buffalo and Staten Island. On his home turf Monday, at the Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, he posed for pictures with a "diversity coalition" seeking to counter claims that he's trying to stoke racial tensions.
The Democratic battle is raging across the state as well. Clinton is looking to appeal to the same working-class voters in the region that voted for her in her 2000 U.S. Senate campaign while Sanders has focused on the industrially depleted western part of the state.
And both have zeroed in on Brooklyn, the home to nearly 1 million registered Democrats — roughly one-sixth of the state’s total Democratic base.
More than 28,000 Sanders supporters flocked to a rally Sunday in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, erupting into cheers as the U.S. senator from Vermont slammed Clinton’s opposition to a $15 minimum wage, her support for the Iraq war while representing New York in the U.S. Senate and her stance against a carbon tax targeting global warming.
“The reason that our campaign is doing so well is that we’re doing something radical in contemporary American politics,” he said. “We are telling the truth.”
His campaign also hopes that, short of an outright win, he could earn a symbolic victory by carrying one of New York’s boroughs or winning a heftier number of minority voters who have so far helped Clinton build a daunting delegate lead. Brian Williams said he and other black millennial voters could help Sanders pull off a surprise.
“Hillary is pandering,” said Williams, a math teacher and Morehouse University graduate. “This is Bernie’s hometown. We Brooklynites buy into authenticity. Hillary might seem the sure shot, but if you don’t have authenticity, it means nothing to us. And Bernie is as real as you get.”
At smaller rallies across the state — Clinton drew a crowd of about 1,000 at a Midtown Manhattan hotel — the former secretary of state blasted Sanders for his Senate vote to grant legal immunity to gun manufacturers and attacked Trump's call to temporarily ban Muslims who aren't U.S. citizens from coming to the U.S.
“When Donald Trump says no Muslims can come to America, a nation founded in religious liberty, that doesn’t only offend us. It sends a message to the rest of the world. If we want to defeat terrorism, and ISIS in particular,” she said, invoking the Islamic State, “we need a coalition across the world.”
The terrain is likely to remain friendly for the two front-runners in the next round of contests. Voters head to the polls in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island on April 26, and polls show Trump and Clinton with leads in most of those states.
But even commanding performances by both in those races won’t end the nomination fight.
Sanders has made clear in recent days his goal, short of securing the Democratic nomination, is a fight at the party's convention in Philadelphia over a $15 minimum wage and other campaign pledges.
And Trump has an increasingly precarious path to the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination, which could pave the way for a floor battle over who should get the GOP nod.
That was clear enough in Georgia over the weekend when Cruz backers claimed 32 of 42 delegate slots up for grabs — leaving Trump supporters to grouse over how a candidate who finished in third in Georgia's primary dominated the hunt for delegates.
Ron Silver, one of the Republican activists supporting Trump spurned at the 7th Congressional District’s contentious delegation meeting in Gwinnett County this weekend, even proposed “a third party that truly represents the citizens.”
“I am a conservative first and I will vote for the most conservative nominee,” he said. “It may be an independent or Democrat. I think that political affiliation should be secondary.”
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