KEENE, N.H. — No one expects Ted Cruz to win Tuesday's primary here. But he's not writing off the state either — far from it — and some of the Texan's allies say he has a real shot at showing he's more than just the candidate of the evangelical right.

“You’re going to see the elements of his success, the components of his success here being different than in Iowa,” said former New Hampshire statehouse Speaker Bill O’Brien, Cruz’s New Hampshire co-chair. “You’re going to see a lot more liberty Republicans be more of a base of his support.”


Cruz has long said that he'll emerge as the conservative consensus candidate if he can bring together Christian conservative, libertarian and tea party activists — as well as, he often says on the trail, Reagan Democrats. With its relatively secular electorate and preponderance of independent voters, the New Hampshire primary will be an early indication whether Cruz can broaden his appeal.

This is no Iowa, the state Cruz won last Monday: Barely more than a fifth of Republican primary voters identified as evangelical or born-again Christians, according to 2012 exit polls — in contrast to nearly two-thirds in Iowa last week.

Regardless of how he fares here, Cruz will be in a strong position headed into the string of upcoming Southern primaries; a second-place or strong-third place finish could put him in a commanding one.

Cruz's biggest opening is with libertarians, who are largely up for grabs after Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul dropped out of the race last week. When unified, that constituency can be a powerful bloc. It played a key role in propelling Ron Paul to a second-place finish in 2012 here, with nearly 23 percent of the vote (though Rand Paul was polling much lower before dropping out).

Cruz and his team have been rushing to lock down Paul voters, building on overtures Cruz has been making to them for months. On Monday, he announced the endorsement of state Sen. Kevin Avard, one of Paul’s New Hampshire co-chairs.

Whether Cruz can convert those endorsements into votes is another matter; several prominent libertarians in the state predicted in interviews they expect Paul's supporters to splinter.

Jim Rubens, a prominent New Hampshire libertarian and 2014 Senate primary candidate who remains unaligned despite personal courting from Ted and Heidi Cruz over the summer, guessed that Cruz has pulled in as much as half of the liberty support that Paul enjoyed before he dropped out. But others, he said, have serious reservations, seeing Cruz as too socially conservative.

“Given that Rand left, he’s probably pulled in half of the Paul people,” he said. But, he added, “There’s some continuing mistrust. Liberty people tend not to be as fierce on the bedroom issues, and so that creates some hesitation on the part of some liberty folks.”

State Sen. Andy Sanborn, another Paul New Hampshire co-chair who met with Cruz last week, was less bullish on Cruz’s prospects with libertarians, saying he didn’t believe the Cruz campaign was “closing the deal” with as many activists as the senator would hope. Sanborn said Sunday that he’s open to Cruz but hasn’t decided.

It doesn’t help that Ron Paul said explicitly last week that Cruz is not the heir to the liberty vote, saying, “he and Hillary have more in common than we would have with either Cruz or Trump or any of them.”

Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler said the Texas senator already proved he could consolidate the liberty vote by winning Iowa, where Rand Paul finished with only 5 percent (his father notched nearly 22 percent in 2012).

“Now that Rand’s out of the race, we think Sen. Cruz is an attractive choice for them,” he said of liberty voters in New Hampshire, noting the five state legislators who had previously backed Paul, but were announced Sunday as Cruz supporters.

Cruz generally benefits here from lower expectations. Many see him as an unnatural fit in the second-most secular state in the country. Several candidates, including Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich, will need strong performances here in order to survive. Cruz does not.

New Hampshire is Cruz’s “bye week,” said former New Hampshire GOP Chairman Fergus Cullen. "It’s not like Christie or Bush.”

The Cruz campaign sees a win here as anything between second and fourth place, O’Brien said. Tyler said he would be “ecstatic” with second place, “very happy” with third, and “fine”— then he corrected himself and said “happy”— with fourth.

Still, Cruz can’t completely write off a poor performance, given the significant time he’s spent here the past month. He took time away from Iowa last month to spend several days stumping across the state here. And in the past week, Cruz packed in five-event days in New Hampshire instead of heading to friendlier, and less crowded, South Carolina. For weeks his campaign has welcomed out-of-state volunteers to Manchester to help him get out the vote.

“He needs to back up the rhetoric he’s brought to the table over the last week or two,” said one senior Republican in the state who’s unaligned. “If he can’t, having laid that on the table, if he can’t produce to some degree in New Hampshire, that puts his appeal into question.”

In an effort to show he’s not a one-dimensional candidate, Cruz has been mixing up his stump speech in New Hampshire. In some venues he makes no mention of investigating Planned Parenthood -- a key promise for evangelicals that he invoked routinely in Iowa — instead emphasizing his support for the Second Amendment and opposition to regulations. On several occasions, he sought to connect with populist-minded voters by saying he shares Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' concerns about Washington corruption, even though believes in different solutions.

In an appearance here at a packed Mexican restaurant in Keene Sunday afternoon, Cruz sounded a libertarian note when he was asked about where transgender people fit in his vision for the country.

“Listen, the great thing about America is we are a welcoming nation built on individual liberty, and each person can choose how to live without the government getting in the way,” Cruz said.

Threading the needle on the hot-button social issue of gay marriage, he noted that he believes marriage should be left up to the states—something he rarely mentions unprompted in more conservative venues. The Supreme Court’s ruling that struck down bans in every state, he added, was “naked judicial activism.”

“We allow people — actually, New Hampshire sums it up very well,” Cruz continued. “To live free or die.”