Only then did Pence transition to his endorsement. “I’m not against anybody, but I will be voting for Ted Cruz in the upcoming Republican primary,” he said.11
Pence later noted his admiration for John Kasich as well, and encouraged Indiana voters to make up their own minds.
Cruz had Fiorina and Pence in his corner; Trump had Bobby Knight. The legendary University of Indiana men’s basketball coach, more famous for his chair-chucking antics than for his 763 career wins on the Hoosier bench, campaigned with Trump around the state in the days before the primary.12 “That son of a bitch can play for me!” Knight cried at one campaign event.
Cruz, for his part, tried to reenact a scene from the film Hoosiers, staging a rally inside a local gym and measuring the ten feet between the floor and the bucket. He called it a “basketball ring,” a jarring malapropism in the hoops-mad state that did little to quell talk of his weirdness.
As they scratched their heads over Pence’s tepid show of support, Cruz’s staff discovered that the governor was of little use anyway. Their polling revealed that Pence was more unpopular than originally thought. Only in two areas of the state were the governor’s numbers right side up among Republicans. Having once envisioned a four-day sprint across the state with Pence in tow, Cruz’s team now worried that it might do more harm than good. Ultimately, the governor did not join Cruz on the stump until May 2, one day prior to the primary. Meanwhile, Trump missed no opportunity to mock Pence’s endorsement, calling it “a very weak one” that came in response to pressure from big donors.
“I think what he said about me was nicer than what he said about Cruz,” Trump said the day before the primary.13 “All the pundits said, ‘You know what, I think that was maybe the weakest endorsement in the history of endorsements.’ In the end, they had to re-run the tape just to find out who he was endorsing.”
A game-changer in the Republican primary Mike Pence was not.
CRUZ KNEW THE END WAS NEAR. ON SATURDAY, APRIL 30, AS HIS WIFE campaigned in Indiana on his behalf, he flew to California for the state’s Republican convention. With its June 7 primary marking the grand finale of the GOP primary schedule, and a whopping 172 delegates at stake, California had become an object of obsession inside the party. Trump led Cruz by more than 400 delegates heading into Indiana, but the question remained whether he could reach the “magic number” of 1,237 needed to clinch the nomination.
Cruz had long taken a defiant stance, insisting to his top aides and biggest donors—and to himself—that he would remain in the race all the way through California. Very recently, however, he had begun to reconsider. He was only four years into his national political career; at forty-five years old, his future in the Republican Party was limitless. While Cruz was painstakingly close to the biggest prize in party politics, Trump’s lead appeared increasingly insurmountable. And for as much as he had come to despise the GOP front-runner, Cruz had also come to recognize the transcendent connection Trump had with the party’s base. Would it be worth making so many enemies, and tarnishing his strong second-place showing, in the pursuit of a victory that seemed unattainable?
Complicating this question was the continued presence of John Kasich. The Ohio governor had won exactly one nominating contest—in Ohio—yet remained an active candidate. He had no money and no campaign infrastructure across the country, but the media coverage of his centrist messaging was effective enough to peel off chunks of delegates in any number states. If the nominating fight was going to result in a brokered convention, every single delegate would count. And if Cruz was going to pursue the long-shot strategy of winning under such a scenario, he needed Kasich out of the race.
In the bowels of a Hyatt Regency near the San Francisco airport, not far from where the state’s GOP convention was unfolding, the Texas senator stepped into a top-secret meeting with the Ohio governor.
“We can’t beat Trump two on one,” Cruz told Kasich. “One of us has to drop out. That’s the only chance we have for a Republican to win the nomination.”
“Do what you need to do, Ted,” Kasich replied. “But you need to understand under no circumstances am I getting out of this race. I’m going all the way to the convention in Ohio. Nothing can change that.”
Cruz frowned. “John, do you realize the consequences of that? You are making it certain that Donald Trump will be the nominee.”
“Ted,” he replied, “I am not leaving this race.”
Dismayed, Cruz flew back to Indiana and informed his senior staff that preparations should be made for his withdrawal from the primary. He had employees all over the country, most especially at the headquarters in Houston, who had never been out on stump with him. He and his campaign manager, Jeff Roe, wanted them flown to Indiana on Tuesday. It would be their last chance to feel the heat of the campaign trail.
Cruz was nursing open wounds as the final hours of his campaign wound down. Naturally, Trump found a way to fill them with salt and lemon juice.
“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s, you know, being shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump said about Cruz’s father, Rafael, during a Fox News interview on the morning of the Indiana primary.14 “What was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting? It’s horrible.”
Trump’s remark was in reference to a National Enquirer “World Exclusive!” published on April 20 that implicated Rafael Cruz in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Shockingly, it could not be confirmed by other news organizations or corroborated by law enforcement sources.
Cruz had tried to discover a peace about his pending departure from the campaign. But Trump’s provocation triggered something he had buried deep inside: a gush of pure, unrestrained hatred for the man Republicans were choosing as their standard-bearer.
“I’m going to do something I haven’t done for the entire campaign. . . . I’m going to tell you what I really think of Donald Trump,” Cruz told reporters shortly after Trump’s Fox News appearance.15 “This man is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth, and in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying. The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist—a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen. Donald Trump is such a narcissist that Barack Obama looks at him and goes, ‘Dude, what’s your problem?’”
Calling his archnemesis “a serial philanderer” who is “utterly amoral,” Cruz concluded, “Donald is a bully . . . Bullies come from a deep, yawning cavern of insecurity. There is a reason Donald builds giant buildings and puts his name on them everywhere he goes.”
Trump’s response was vintage: “Today’s ridiculous outburst only proves what I have been saying for a long time, that Ted Cruz does not have the temperament to be president of the United States.”
Hours later, Trump trounced Cruz in the Indiana primary, winning by 16 points and capturing all of the state’s 57 delegates.
Cruz promptly quit the race. “From the beginning I’ve said that I would continue on as long as there was a viable path to victory,” he said, his wife, Heidi, standing by his side. “Tonight, I’m sorry to say, it appears that path has been foreclosed.”