Indiana’s GOP primary may be the last call for Ted Cruz | McClatchy Washington Bureau

The city has just had two fierce battlegrounds: NBC’s American Ninja Warrior was competing downtown. So were Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

The political endurance test is likely to end more quickly than the fitness one. Maybe Tuesday, when Indiana Republicans are poised to all but end Cruz’s White House bid and send Trump on an unstoppable path to the presidential nomination.

Late polling suggested Trump is headed for a big victory.

“Cruz has been unable to create a viable alternative, while Trump has had a dialogue with the voters,” said Brian Howey, an Indianapolis-based pollster.

As in other states, Trump’s message that Washington is broken and it’ll take a china-breaking, tough-talking outsider to fix it has drawn raucous, enthusiastic audiences eager to see change.

Trump so far has won 996 delegates to the GOP July convention, 241 short of the number needed for nomination. Cruz has 565, and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who because of a nine-day-old pact with Cruz did not make a serious effort here, has 153. They have no mathematical chance of winning on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention. Their only hope going into Indiana is to make sure Trump also cannot win on the first ballot, so they can fight on inside the convention.

Cruz here got the one-on-one combat he’s been relishing, and he’s poured every resource and deployed every weapon he can into this state. He spent Monday barnstorming Indiana, while Trump held two rallies and pressured Cruz to end his campaign should he lose.

“He should leave the race if I win,” Trump told DailyMail.com in an interview.

Almost daily, Cruz has unveiled a new tactic aimed at generating momentum, yet nothing has seemed to ignite his campaign.

On April 24, Kasich agreed to step back from Indiana and Cruz said he’d stay out of Oregon and New Mexico, which hold primaries later this month.

The pact was not well-pitched – Kasich did not ask his voters to go with Cruz – and voters reacted against it, with 58 percent saying in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll last week that they didn’t like it.

The Kasich alliance seemed to reinforce what Trump has been protesting for months. Marist found that most Republican voters thought it was “further proof that the Republicans are trying to rig the game against Trump.”

“That set me toward Trump a little bit,” said Bill Halstead of New Castle, who has a home inspection business and was undecided in the days leading up to the election. “It just sounds like ‘I’m losing and doing what I have to to win.’ ”

Dave Purk, a financial analyst who works in downtown Indianapolis, leaned the other way. “I still feel like it’s the lesser of two evils,” he said. “I’m probably going to end up going for Ted Cruz.”

On Friday, Cruz won the backing of Gov. Mike Pence.

Sort of. The Pence announcement was widely viewed as lukewarm. Pence spent time praising Trump, and then said he was backing Cruz.

“It was embarrassing for Cruz,” said Howey.

Through it all, Cruz and his team have stuck to their relentless theme, that Trump is unqualified to be president and a vote for the billionaire businessman is essentially a vote for Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. Monday, the campaign launched an ad that charges “Donald Trump is lying about Ted Cruz.”

Cruz repeated the thought during a campaign stop in Osceola.

“I trust the people of Indiana to differentiate,” he said. “We are not a bitter, angry, petty, bigoted people.”

Trump has been getting a boost from Bobby Knight, the legendary former Indiana University basketball coach – and Cruz’s own gaffe, referring to a “basketball ring.”

Trump also is finding strength in the usual places. Throughout the campaign, he’s won with a broad coalition of middle- and lower-income voters, those without college degrees, voters over 45, men and conservatives.

Indiana state Rep. Alan Morrison endorsed Trump a month ago. “The first thing is leadership,” he said. “He’s built an empire of businesses. He signs the front page of a paycheck.”

“It’s not a natural transition from Gov. Kasich to Ted Cruz,” said Jennifer Hallowell, a longtime GOP consultant who is not affiliated with any of the presidential campaigns.

Referring to Trump’s victories last week in five Northeastern states, she said, “Trump looks even stronger. I do think many people are starting to see it as inevitable.”