Cruz wins Republican caucus in Utah; Sanders wins Idaho and Utah
ASSOCIATED
Ted Cruz has won Utah’s Republican presidential caucus while Bernie Sanders won the Idaho and Utah Democratic caucus.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Ted Cruz has won Utah’s Republican presidential caucus to score a key victory in his bid to close the gap on front runner Donald Trump.
Cruz is on pace to take all of the state’s delegates by finishing with more than 50 percent of the vote.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich was running second with Trump in last place.
Cruz’s win follows endorsements in the last week from Utah. Gov. Gary Herbert and Mitt Romney, the GOP’s last presidential nominee who holds clout among the state’s predominantly Mormon voters.
Romney and Herbert backed the Texas senator in an effort to derail Trump’s path to victory.
All three Republican presidential candidates made public appearances last week in Utah ahead of the caucus.
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Bernie Sanders won Idaho’s Democratic caucus.
Sanders and Hillary Clinton were vying for the state’s 27 delegates to the party’s national convention in Philadelphia this summer.
And while Idaho is one of the most conservative states in the nation, having not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Sanders actively courted voters here.
He had campaign rallies in eastern Idaho as well as Boise.
President Barack Obama handily won the Democratic contest in Idaho in 2008.
Sanders also won Utah’s Democratic presidential caucus, though he remains hundreds of delegates behind Clinton.
The Vermont senator campaigned hard in Utah over the last week. He appeared twice at rallies that drew thousands of people, many of them young voters.
Clinton didn’t make any public campaign appearances in Utah ahead of the caucus, instead sending her daughter to speak last week on her behalf.
Sanders told Utah voters at a rally Monday in Salt Lake City that they were compassionate people who should embrace his “political revolution.” He vowed to raise the minimum wage, provide equal pay to women and alleviate student debt. He decried an economy that favors the wealthy and a flawed criminal justice system.
Under a fresh cloud of overseas violence, Trump and Clinton added to their delegate troves on Tuesday with victories in Arizona as the 2016 presidential contest turned into a clash of would-be commanders in chief.
Long lines and high interest marked primary elections across Arizona, Utah and Idaho that were largely an afterthought for much of the day as the world grappled with a new wave of bloody attacks in Europe. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a series of blasts in Brussels that left dozens dead and many more wounded.
Yet there was a frenzy of activity in Utah as voters lined up to caucus and the state Democratic Party’s website crashed due to high traffic. In Arizona, voters waited two hours to cast primary ballots in some cases, while police were called to help with traffic control and at least one polling place ran out of ballots.
Trump and Clinton both enjoyed overwhelming delegate leads heading into Tuesday’s contests.
Trump’s Arizona victory gives him the all of the state’s 58 delegates, a setback for his underdog challengers. On the Democratic side, Arizona’s delegates are awarded proportionally.
Arizona and Utah featured elections for both parties on Tuesday, while Idaho Democrats also held presidential caucuses.
Sanders and Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich hoped to reverse the sense of inevitability taking hold around both party front-runners. Anti-Trump Republicans are running out of time to prevent him from securing the 1,237 delegates needed to claim the nomination.
As voters flooded to the polls, the presidential candidates lashed out at each other’s foreign policy prescriptions, showcasing sharp contrasts in confronting the threat of Islamic extremism.
Trump, the Republican front-runner, charged that the United States has “no choice” but to adopt his proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the country to prevent the spread of terrorism. He described as “eggheads” those who respect international law’s ban on torture, the use of which he argued would have prevented the day’s attacks.
“We can be nice about it, and we can be politically correct about it, but we’re being fools,” Trump said in an interview on CNN. “We’re going to have to be very strong, or we’re not going to have a country left.”
Clinton and Trump’s Republican rivals, meanwhile, questioned the GOP front-runner’s temperament and readiness to serve as commander in chief, and condemned his calls to diminish U.S. involvement with NATO.
“I see the challenge ahead as one where we’re bringing the world together, where we’re leading the world against these terrorist networks,” Clinton said Tuesday at a union hall in Everett, Washington. “Some of my opponents want to build walls and shut the world off. Well, you tell me, how high does the wall have to be to keep the Internet out?”
Cruz seized on Trump’s foreign policy inexperience while declaring that the U.S. is at war with the Islamic State group.
“He doesn’t have the minimal knowledge one would expect from a staffer at the State Department, much less from the commander in chief,” he told reporters. “The stakes are too high for learning on the job.”
The debate between the two took a detour late Tuesday night as they engaged in an unusual Twitter exchange about their wives.
The billionaire warned Cruz he would “spill the beans on your wife” after an anti-Trump outside group ran an ad in Utah featuring Trump’s wife, Melania, in a photo shoot that ran in GQ magazine more than a decade ago.
Cruz shot back with a tweet of his own, saying in part, “Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you’re more of a coward than I thought.”
Trump’s brash tone has turned off some Republican voters in Utah, where preference polls suggest Cruz has a chance to claim more than 50 percent of the caucus vote — and with it, all 40 of Utah’s delegates. Trump could earn some delegates should Cruz fail to exceed 50 percent, in which case the delegates would be awarded based on each candidate’s vote total.
Trump supporter Easton Brady, 19, of Provo, Utah, cheered the billionaire’s brash style, even as he acknowledged Trump doesn’t play as well in Utah as other parts of the country.
“I think Trump says a lot of dumb things, but he’s human,” Brady said. “I don’t care.”
On the Democratic side, Clinton’s delegate advantage is even greater than Trump’s.
The former secretary of state is coming off last week’s five-state sweep of Sanders, who remains popular among his party’s most liberal voters but needs to improve his performance if he expects to stay relevant. The Vermont senator, now trailing Clinton by more than 300 pledged delegates, has targeted Tuesday’s races as the start of a comeback tour.
28 responses to “Cruz wins Republican caucus in Utah; Sanders wins Idaho and Utah”
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None of us are as dumb as all of us
Most of us are as dumb as some of us.
True dat JP
Numerous reports of fraud on the part of the state. Dems not being allowed to vote. Voters not being found in system. Incompetent poll workers.
That’s not fraud, come on! These poll workers are volunteers and they only do this during election time. Try being a poll worker and then comment, please.
Cruz’s campaign is getting desperate. Looks like his supporters started it. Trump’s wife would be a great First Lady.
Better than having Bill as first man.
Which wife?
Never had a first man before might be interesting. Sanders will win Hawaii with all his Ad’s. Don’t know whats wrong with the rest of our congressional delegation that’s supporting Hillary. You would think that they would be out there but looks like their lost as usual. Not even one Ad for Hillary.
Never fear. If Hillary wins, she won’t let Bill anywhere near the White House.
He will have to content himself riding his pal’s airborne “Lolita Express” to “Fantasy Island” and shtuping under age teeny boppers.
Trump, the Republican front-runner, charged that the United States has “no choice” but to adopt his proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the country to prevent the spread of terrorism. How is TSA going to identify people who are Muslim? Trump’s policy reminds us of the terrible policy that the Roosevelt Administration imposed on Japanese-Americans during World War II. If I were to vote, it would be for Clinton, just based on that possible Trump policy.
Trump should make the ban on Muslims from Middle Eastern ancestry- those are where terrorist are most likely coming from.
Middle-eastern ancestry? That’s what the first commenter noted about the U.S. policy during WWII. Even U.S. citizens were imprisoned here.
Would mid eastern ancestry include Jews? Here we go again. You do understand that Adolf also sported the top “flap over”. Cept the color back then was black.
The middle eastern ancestry is problematic. How many people understand that the Hebrew people, the Arab people, and the populations that comprised most of what was once the Ottoman Empire are ALL Semitic. So, the main thrust by Trump is against the followers of a given religion. However, his bigoted followers, not given to such distinctions, classify all peoples with Semitic origins as the enemy.
Best course of action?
End all immigration UFN.
Every day Trump says something that contradicts what he said the day before and something that makes me realized what a disaster it would be if he became president. Go Bernie!
How much are Hillary and her filthy, Goldman-Sachs minions paying to keep their silly Dem-o-puppet Cruz from bowing out. In the end, sir, have you absolutely no integrity?
Cruz’s wife works for Goldman Sachs. They pay Hillary. $250,000 to make a speech? Is there a tie in to Wall Street?
Lyin Ted.
Baloney,Clinton hasn’t changed her principles because of Wall Street.
She can’t change something that she never had.
Trump is beginning to rant rave, and foment hatred and division as only one person in history before him has done. That man pointed to another political party and a people as being the reason for the condition of his nation. That man singled out the communists and a Semitic people as being the reason for the morass that post-WW I Germany found itself in. He ranted and raved against that people and that party in all his public utterings and fomented rage and anger amongst his followers, causing them to strike out against these “perceived” enemies. Then he had his followers go through the streets of Berlin, breaking the shop windows of businesses owned by members of that Semitic people. And set fire to the building where the national assembly congregated, and blamed it on the communists. And he appealed to his people as THE pure race, being chewed up by mongrelized peoples.
A man born and raised during that era told me that on the occasion that this hero of the people drove in triumph through the streets of his home city in Germany, his mother held his hand tightly, and said, “This man will rebuild Germany. He will make it great once more.”
Sound familiar? Trump’s unabashed, transparent call to white bigots and supremacist groups. His diatribes to strike out at his perceived enemies. His call to his supporters to carry out his commands to strike back. His singling out of a group of people to call enemies of the country. Trump even emulates, albeit in exaggerated fashion, the forward sweep of his hero’s hair-do. A moustache, however, would have been too transparent.
Heil, Hitler! Sieg heil, Trump!
Thank you for playing the part of Moth to Trump’s Flame.
For his candidacy to succeed he needs constantly to be bathed in public attention, and not necessarily positive attention.
Although you don’t realize it, you – – like the vast bulk of our left-full-rudder “news” media – – are being played by a master showman.
If he becomes President he will owe you a vote of thanks.
Lol.
Mitt grump and his ilk out of pure desperation use the Nazi Club on Trump. Those using it are the real fascists.
Winning IDAHO is a shallow-victory, at best… Presently, less than 20% of the population–educated in Idaho–are functionally-literate and don’t have any College related educations.
Moreover, it is one this nations largest populations of Ku-Klux-Klan members–where they still hold “Klan’s Meetings/Gatherings” on remote Farm-Fields–holding torches, in the night… Whoopee, Bernie! So, now we’re down to “Bernie The Bigot”, “Hillary The Psychopath” (who should, in actuality, be “Exiled”), “Ted The Redneck and Part-Time Hispanic” (and probable Alien), or “The Donald”–a Narcissistic Hebephrenic with Dictatorial Issues (similar to “Kirk Caldwell”), and waiting In The Wings– Jorge Mario Bergoglio aka Pope Francis, who believes he should rule The World. So, I urge everyone to vote for “Kermit” The Frog, who appears to have minor inferiority issues, but is, in fact, only SHY. And, while Kermit is a Puppet, he is Honest and Trustworthy, possesses great Empathy for all Life–everywhere–and is modest in spending, and is anti-violence, and wants to feed and care for all Life everywhere. Also, perhaps “Miss Piggy” would now consider becoming First Lady (although some of their Off-Spring might look very similar to “Chelsea”)!
VOTE “KERMIT”!
Utah and Idaho, what are they thinking?
Even the media is against Trump. The big headline was Cruz wins Utah with its 40 delegates while Trump takes Arizona with its 58 delegates. If my math is correct, Trump increased his lead by 18 delegates. Shouldn’t the headlines be Trump takes Arizona and increases his lead. The more Trump is demonized, it seems the stronger he gets.