With an eye on SEC primary, Cruz keeps focus on the South

Source: Frontloading HQ

Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz was flocked after a solemn prayer service in Birmingham’s suburbs. Ovations greeted him long before he took the stage at a standing-room-only rally in Pelham. And more than 1,000 people crammed into a town hall in Huntsville to nosh on free ice cream and hear him speak.

“I think we’ve got the whole state of Alabama here,” he quipped as the Huntsville crowd roared to life.

The Republican’s jam-packed bus tour across the South this week is the biggest commitment yet of any presidential candidate to the “SEC primary,” the collection of mostly Southern states voting as a bloc on March 1. He followed his weekend swing through Georgia and South Carolina with scheduled visits this week to five other Southern states.

The four early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada remain the prime draw, but with 17 candidates in the race, a drawn-out battle for the Republican nomination is all but assured.

And the big showing at last weekend's RedState Gathering of conservative activists in Atlanta — nine GOP presidential hopefuls attended — was seen as testament to the March vote's immediate imprint.

“They’re coming, and we’re pleased to host them,” said Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who pioneered the primary.

Race for endorsements is on

All across the South this weekend, Cruz and other candidates sought to stake their claim to the region. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who had already made a couple of other stops in metro Atlanta earlier this year, met with faith leaders Saturday morning and then stopped by Lovie’s BBQ in Buckhead to shake hands with about 100 supporters and curious onlookers.

“We’ve been here a lot in the last couple months, and we’ll keep coming back,” Walker said at Lovie’s. “It’s important for us. The March 1 primary is incredibly important. We think we can do well here in Georgia, not just in Atlanta, but across the state.”

U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, a Gainesville Republican, endorsed Walker and helped arrange meetings for him Saturday. Collins said Walker’s approach of “conservative values being worked out in reality” holds appeal in Georgia.

“We understand it’s a long-term game,” Collins said. “He understands it’s a long-term game.”

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee hails from a March 1-voting state and won Georgia in 2008. After speaking at RedState, Huckabee traveled to Perry for a fish fry, where he picked up the endorsement of former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue and won a straw poll.

"This is a part of the country with which I not only associate and identify, but connect to," Huckabee said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Channel 2 Action News.

“And I believe there is an incredibly important part of this process that’s going to keep me very focused on states like Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee,” he said. “It’s critical for us to win here.”

Cruz’s SEC primary strategy

It is Cruz, however, who has gone all-in on the SEC primary. He is among the first candidates to fully organize in Georgia and other March 1 states, with volunteer statewide chairmen and grass-roots leaders lined up throughout the region.

Among his supporters in Georgia are Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens, who was on hand to cheer Cruz at RedState, and U.S. Rep. Jody Hice of Monroe, only the second member of the state congressional delegation to publicly pick a GOP candidate so far.

At events in Georgia and Alabama, he brought attendees to their feet for crowd-pleasing promises to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, “rip up and rescind” the proposed nuclear deal with Iran and shower Israel with support.

“This bus tour is all about building our grass-roots organization and our leadership team,” Cruz said after his Huntsville stop. “And I have to tell you the energy and enthusiasm that we saw in Alabama and yesterday in Georgia and South Carolina is electric.”

Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler, who worked for the Newt Gingrich campaign and super PAC during the 2012 campaign, said showering attention on SEC states this early will pay dividends later as GOP rivals realize “Ted Cruz has been here the whole time.”

Tyler, who laid out the theory of a Cruz candidacy in an interview with the AJC in Cleveland, said that while candidates such as Walker, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio are duking it out for support among "establishment" voters, Cruz is showing he has support among tea party members and evangelicals.

Cruz is by far the best-funded of the insurgent candidates, having raised $52 million among his campaign and super PACs. And while the rest of the more hard-core conservatives are fighting to win Iowa for the media and money bounce it can bring, Tyler says Cruz can afford to play the long game.

“The establishment is going to split up their vote, and then somebody’s going to be roadkill in Florida,” which votes March 15, Tyler said. “And then we’ll have hopefully organized the South to an extent where on March 15 we continue to be off and running.”

His challenge is whether he can outlast the supernova campaign of billionaire Donald Trump. A Channel 2 Action News poll released last week showed Trump leading by a wide margin in Georgia, as he does nationally, with 34 percent of the vote. Bush was in second place at 12 percent. Cruz was mired in sixth with 5.4 percent.

“I think Trump’s really taking it from everybody,” Tyler said.