The Cruz campaign immediately went after Rand Paul supporters when the Senator suspended his campaign. | AP Photo Ted Cruz, born-again libertarian His team has been working for months to take Rand Paul's support. Now Paul is out, and the takeover attempt is in full effect.

HENNIKER, N.H.— Bill O'Brien knew exactly what to do when Rand Paul officially dropped out of the 2016 race. He went on a dialing spree.

O'Brien, one of Ted Cruz's New Hampshire co-chairs and a former state House Speaker, had tried "15 to 20" state reps by noon, looking to pull Paul supporters over to team Cruz.


Former U.S. Senator Bob Smith, another co-chair for Cruz here, did much the same when he heard the news in the midst of an MSNBC appearance. Back on the Cruz campaign bus, he too was calling Paul-aligned activists and lawmakers, and even members of Paul's leadership team.

It's not a coincidence that Cruz's co-chairs had an identical game plan: they've been courting Paul's supporters for months, hoping to siphon support away from a campaign on its last legs. Now those legs have given out, and Team Cruz is ready to pounce.

In their pitches, Cruz's supporters are mixing an homage to the Paul family while claiming common ideological ground.

“We respect and admire Sen. Paul’s defense of liberty over the many, many years, as well as his dad’s, and we would welcome his support because we think we have many likeminded views, especially on liberty, freedom and the Constitution,” Smith said when asked to sum up the messaging.

Smith and O’Brien declined to say how many Paul supporters had already come on board as of late Wednesday morning, but Smith said the number was “significant.”

“There’s an openness to moving over the Sen. Cruz. I think they recognize that if they’re looking for a constitutional conservative, there’s one remaining in the race,” O'Brien said.

Representatives for Cruz wouldn't say whether the candidate himself was making calls, but on Tuesday night, Cruz was already telegraphing his plans to pitch to libertarians. “Part of the reason we are more competitive in New Hampshire than the typical conservative is, we’ve got enough support on the libertarian side that it backfills,” Cruz told reporters in a late-night conversation on his plane ahead of Paul’s announcement. “That’s fairly unusual.”

“But I’ve always thought our greatest strength was breadth. Iowa you’ve got more evangelicals, New Hampshire you’ve got more libertarians," Cruz continued. "Why I talk about the Reagan coalition so often is, most candidates are either, conservatives compete in Iowa, moderates compete in New Hampshire. Usually you can’t do both.”

For all the optimism, Cruz remains an unnatural fit for New Hampshire, the second-most secular state in the country. And his New Hampshire challenges were evident as he stumped here Wednesday.

He recalibrated his stump speech early in the day, focusing more on themes of economic freedom and defending the constitution, cracking jokes about government phone tapping and name-checking the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth and Tenth Amendments. “There are all sorts of areas where the federal government has no business sticking its nose,” Cruz told the crowd.

He also downplayed some of the social issues that he had emphasized in his bid to court Iowa's evangelicals. (He did continue to pray on the podium and quote Scripture, but his closing prayer was rushed and quieter than usual.)

But even the tailored approach, at times, fell flat: "We need to protect the 10th Amendment, or as President Obama calls it, 'the what?'" he cracked. When the crowd responded with only a smattering of laughter, he said to one man, "You like that one."

Polls show Cruz is a strong candidate to finish second in New Hampshire, but he still lags far behind Donald Trump. Cruz has hovered around 12 percent in state polls, while Trump has polled in the high 20s and 30s. (Paul consistently languished in the low single digits.)

Those polls, however, came before Cruz's win in the Iowa caucus. And his team insists that they don’t believe that the senator will win the state, an effort to manage expectations. But on Tuesday night, Cruz acknowledged that he is trying for first place anyway.

“I don’t know if we’re going to win New Hampshire,” Cruz said. “I hope we will. We’re going to try to.”

Winning over Paul's supporters would help in that effort, but even if Cruz's supporters were immediately ready to reach out to Paul backers, manyof Paul's supporters may take time to mourn before moving on.

“I think a lot of people are still processing, but probably I would say, Sen. Cruz might be a benefactor of some of that,” said a former top Paul official familiar with the state. “I’m sure some of those people are looking at him as the next-best option.”

By late afternoon, at a stop in Goffstown, Cruz had found a warmer crowd--with several former Paul supporters in attendance who said they were still shopping around, but were open to him.

"I'd like to see people consolidate around a viable alternative, I would like to see that," said Leah Wolczko, a state employee who has reservations about what she perceives as Cruz's foreign policy hawkishness, but is now considering him after Paul dropped out. "I would like to see us come out with a candidate we can live with."

She continued: With Paul out of the race, aside from Cruz, "there is no one else."

