Thursday, March 28, 2024

Campaign Leak: Did a Cruz-Rubio Ticket Nearly Happen?

From left: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)
From left: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

It’s a time-honored tradition. Candidate runs for president. Candidate loses. Candidate’s campaign staff blames everyone and everything in an anonymous tell-all piece to the media. It happens every cycle — should’a, would’a, could’a.

But this piece at CNN is still worth a read. Apparently there was a real push to put Marco Rubio on Ted Cruz’s ticket prior to the March 15th primary in Florida. Jake Tapper reports at CNN:

Top officials of the Cruz campaign are convinced there is one specific step that could have stopped Trump — and they blame Sen. Marco Rubio for not taking that step.

In early March, it became clear that Trump was well on his way to the nomination and would even likely defeat Rubio in his home state of Florida’s March 15 primary. According to several sources close to Cruz, the Cruz campaign conducted several secret polls to see what the impact would be if Rubio joined Cruz as his running mate, with Cruz at the top of the ticket.

The Cruz campaign polled in three March 15 primary states, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina — though not in Ohio, home to Kasich, or in Florida.

They also tested the matchup in a poll in Arizona, which would hold its contest on March 22, and in Wisconsin, which would hold its primary on April 5.

What did polls suggest a Cruz-Rubio ticket would do in those states?

“Blowout,” said a source close to Cruz. “65%-35%,” with Trump losing.

However, Rubio’s campaign claims a deal was never offered, but even if it was, Rubio wouldn’t have accepted.

A source familiar with Rubio’s thinking says there never really was a concrete offer from the Cruz campaign to team up — just vague discussions from donors about polls and the potential for such a move — but either way, he was not interested.

For one, the source said, Rubio thought the notion of two senators from Washington, D.C., teaming up against Trump would fit all too easily into the Trump outsider narrative. Second, Rubio was concerned that as a fellow Cuban-American freshman senator, he didn’t think he complemented Cruz particularly well. Lastly, Rubio felt that the nominee should have the freedom to pick whomever he or she wants at the convention to help win in November and not be bound to a short-term decision made in the thick of the primaries. The lack of bounce after Cruz attempted such a move with Carly Fiorina reinforced his belief that he was right, the source said.

Apparently John Kasich, who never led Rubio in the delegate count despite staying in the race nearly two months longer, also offered a deal to Rubio’s camp.

A source close to Kasich reported that the Ohio governor tried to broach the subject with Rubio as well, and the campaigns discussed it as well, before and after the March 8 Michigan primary. Kasich’s team did not conduct any polling but they are also convinced if the two men had teamed up, “we would have swept the rest of the primaries.”

What the result would have been in these alternate universes where a Cruz-Rubio ticket was on the ballot, or a Kasich-Rubio team, is unknown. Trump, in this reality went on to win in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, and Arizona. He was not stopped.

Read the full piece at CNN here.

Jon Schweppe is the Communications Director for American Principles Project. Follow him on Twitter @JonSchweppe.

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