US businessman Donald Trump on Saturday goaded fellow Republican front-runner, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, over his eligibility to be president and professed bafflement that he is not beating him in Iowa polls as a delicate detente between the two became ever more frayed.
The race is intensifying with just over three weeks remaining before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses lead off the state-by-state nominating contests. Trump leads Cruz by double digits in national polls, but the Texas senator leads in some Iowa polls, which could give him a boost heading into the Feb. 9 New Hampshire primary.
With Trump in Iowa for the first time in the new year, Iowans were seeing a sharp contrast between the grinding Iowa campaign of Cruz — whose five stops on Saturday completed a six-day, 28-event bus tour — and the splashy mega-rallies that have become as much Trump’s brand as his gilded hotels. Both have attracted overflow crowds: Trump at large halls and stadiums; Cruz in countless coffee shops, convenience stores, churches and diners.
Photo: Reuters
The Texas senator and the billionaire have been quietly circling one another as they work to win over voters in the final stretch leading to the caucuses. The feud escalated on Saturday as Trump lashed out at Cruz on multiple fronts before a packed 665-person capacity auditorium in Ottumwa, Iowa, with many more voters crowded into an overflow room.
“The polls are essentially tied. I don’t get it,” Trump said in the first of several references to Cruz in rambling remarks that spanned an hour.
Trump attacked Cruz’s apparent shift on ethanol subsidies, a key issue in the agricultural state, the influence of wealthy campaign donors and renewed questions about the Texas senator’s Canadian birth.
“He’s got to straighten out his problem,” Trump said just two minutes into his address. “You can’t have that problem and go and be the nominee.”
Trump late last year began efforts to undermine Cruz, questioning the senator’s religion and accusing him at recent events of stealing his idea to build a wall along the Mexico border. The intensity escalated last week when Trump questioned whether the Canadian-born Cruz was eligible to be president.
Cruz has been careful not to take on Trump directly even as a few other rivals have savaged the reality TV star, hoping to attract Trump supporters should the political newcomer’s campaign implode. Cruz chalked up Trump’s comments about his eligibility to the political “silly season” and said it is a non-issue.
However, he appeared to offer a counterpunch on Friday, when he suggested that Trump was not devoting the time and energy to wooing Iowa voters that history shows is needed to win.
“There is an Iowa way of campaigning and deciding caucuses,” Cruz told supporters packed into a basement of a pizza restaurant in Decorah. “I believe the only way to compete and win in the state of Iowa is to come and spend the time asking the voters for their support. Looking them in the eye.”
While Cruz has been traveling by bus, meeting people at one event after the next over jam-packed days, Trump typically holds a single major rally, then departs. While that is a break from tradition, his campaign says he is able to reach far more potential voters than candidates at smaller events can do.
Campaign manager Corey Lewandowski earlier in the week said that Trump has a series of stops planned for the next three weeks leading to the caucuses, including multiple overnight stays.
In Ottumwa, Trump himself vowed to return.
“I’m going to be here a lot over the next three weeks — a lot,” he said.
Yet the usually confident Trump also acknowledged he might not ultimately win the state’s caucuses.
“We’ve got to win Iowa, oh we’ve got to win it, otherwise we’re wasting our time,” he said. “If I don’t make it I’m going to love you folks just as much.”
Meanwhile, Cruz has said he has no interest in getting into a war of words with Trump.
“Our friends in the media desperately want Donald and me to engage in a cage match,” Cruz said on Friday. “I am not interested in throwing rocks at Donald Trump or any other Republican running for president.”
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