MADISON, WI (WHBL) - Primaries and caucuses held in 11 states on “Super Tuesday” showed that Donald Trump was the most popular candidate in the then five-man Republican presidential primary field. Coming in second was Ted Cruz, and that has the chairman of this candidate’s campaign in Wisconsin looking at the positives from that day.
“I think they bode very well for Senator Cruz. He won three states in addition to what he already had previously won. In fact in Texas he won big,” says area state Senator Duey Stroebel.
Tuesday’s votes have him looking ahead to the next set of primary and caucus votes across the country. He also responded to a comment made by candidate Marco Rubio, who said this week a vote for Trump is a vote for Hillary Clinton and a Republican loss in the November general election. “I think where we’re at is a vote for anyone other than Cruz is really a vote for Hillary, because that’s predicated on the fact that only Cruz is in a position to beat Trump now. I mean you look at the delegates; Cruz has almost twice as many as Rubio, and that gets harder and harder to catch up on.”
He adds the Cruz campaign is looking strong in upcoming primary and caucus elections over the next week such as Kansas and Louisiana, which will help him grow his delegate count and improve his position to be the best challenger to Trump.
That has Stroebel echoing Cruz, who said Tuesday night the time has come for all other challenger to him and Trump to drop out and make this a two person race. “We need to coalesce. We need to do it now. If you are someone who thinks that Donald Trump is going to take this country in the wrong direction, and if you feel that way I believe you need to be supporting Senator Ted Cruz right now.”
Stroebel is focused on leading the efforts for Cruz in Wisconsin as the state’s primary is 33 days away, and says the work to create a strong support network is going very well. “There’s a lot of grassroots people that support Senator Cruz out there. We are getting very close to our goal of having a chairman in each county for the campaign of Senator Cruz. So we’re very optimistic, and things are coming along quite well on that front.”
Stroebel says it will be a busy next month, but he is willing to admit that if Wisconsin’s winner take all primary were to take place today the prospect for anyone but the current front runner is not good. He is hoping the dozen-plus primary and caucus contests prior to April 5th will convince other candidates to drop out and make this a two-person race for the GOP nomination. “If we’re talking the number of candidates we are today at the time that we are in Wisconsin; you do the math. I think it’s pretty hard to deny that Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate. Not impossible that he’s not, but it’s pretty hard.”
“So I’m just going back to the fact that we got to get this thing down to two people. We’ve got to get it down to the guy who’s most able to defeat Donald Trump, and that person is Ted Cruz. From a philosophical point, as a conservative, and as a Republican, and also from a practical standpoint is where he stands today with delegates versus the competition in the Republican primary.”