The Ohio governor will give the Texan senator a free run in Indiana in exchange for the same favor in Oregon and New Mexico

Ted Cruz and John Kasich have announced that their campaigns will cede certain states in an attempt to keep Donald Trump from reaching the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the Republican nomination.

In a pair of coordinated statements released on Sunday night, the Cruz and Kasich campaigns said that the Texas senator would concentrate his resources in Indiana while the Ohio governor would focus on Oregon and New Mexico instead.

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Both have already stated that they expect there to be a contested convention in Cleveland in July and are already preparing for a second ballot.

However, for that scenario to come to pass, they first need to stop Trump. This apparent agreement seems to be an admission that only way to do so is for his opponents to finally cooperate against him. Under current rules, delegates are only bound by the results of their state’s primary or caucus for the first ballot. On any subsequent ballot, delegates are free to vote their conscience and, since delegate selection is often an entirely separate process from a primary, there is likely to be a significant shift in votes on a second ballot.

Jeff Roe, Cruz’s campaign manager, went first. He wrote: “Our campaign will focus its time and resources in Indiana and in turn clear the path for Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico, and we would hope that allies of both campaigns would follow our lead.”

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Cruz has already shifted resources to focus entirely on Indiana, whose 30 winner-take-all statewide delegates represent the biggest individual haul remaining. The state, which holds its primary on 3 May, also allocates three delegates to the winner of each of its nine congressional districts. Polls in the Hoosier State had Trump with a narrow lead ahead of Cruz with Kasich lagging behind. One campaign source indicated that internal polls showed Kasich was dividing the anti-Trump vote in Indiana and serving as a major hindrance to Cruz’s prospects. Further, a Trump win in Indiana would make it far more likely that the real estate mogul would win the 1237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination on the first ballot.

The Cruz statement was followed minutes later by a statement from Kasich strategist John Weaver. The veteran operative wrote: “Due to the fact that the Indiana primary is winner-take-all statewide and by congressional district, keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1,237 bound delegates before Cleveland. We are very comfortable with our delegate position in Indiana already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaign’s resources west and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana.”

Weaver added that “in turn, we will focus our time and resources in New Mexico and Oregon, both areas that are structurally similar to the north-east politically, where Governor Kasich is performing well. We would expect independent third-party groups to do the same and honor the commitments made by the Cruz and Kasich campaigns.”

Although the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment, the candidate reacted in a late night tweet:

Trump later issued a follow-up statement in which he accused Cruz and Kasich of “collusion” and said: “It is sad that two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for 10 months in order to try and stop that person from getting the Republican nomination.”

It is sad that two grown politicians have to collude against one person who has only been a politician for 10 months Donald Trump

The pact already has seen some signs of fragility. When asked about it over a breakfast of berries in a Pennsylvania diner on Monday, Kasich said of Indiana Republicans: “They ought to vote for me.”

The Ohio governor insisted that the plan was all about resource allocation.

Cruz, at a press conference, dismissed questions of “collusion” and instead simply described the deal as “an allocation of resources that makes a lot of sense”.

The agreement comes just days after Cruz suggested in Florida that Kasich was only staying in the presidential race because “it may be John is auditioning to be Donald’s vice president”. The Texas senator also said earlier on Sunday that the Ohio governor did not have “a plausible path” to the nomination.



Tim Miller, a spokesman for Our Principles PAC, an anti-Trump superPAC, said he found the apparent alliance “encouraging”, when asked for comment via e-mail. He added: “See you in Cleveland.”

Oregon, which holds its primary on 17 May, and New Mexico, which votes on 7 June, each have relatively proportional primaries. Oregon allocates its 28 delegates in purely proportional manner while New Mexico has a threshold that requires a candidate to get 15% of the vote. The result is that these states are far less important on the first ballot than winner-take-all Indiana and seemingly give Kasich the short end of the stick in this deal. However, with almost all delegates unbound after that point, the hope in the Ohio governor’s campaign is that they can flip a number of delegates on a potential second ballot.

Despite the deal in these states, both campaigns made it clear that they would compete against each other in all of the remaining primary contests.

Cruz’s campaign chief said: “In other states holding their elections for the remainder of the primary season, our campaign will continue to compete vigorously to win.”

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Past attempts for Republican candidates to make anti-Trump deals had petered out. Kasich squelched an overture from Marco Rubio to engage in strategic voting in their home-state primaries on 15 March. While a Rubio spokesman urged supporters of the Florida senator to vote for Kasich in the Ohio, the Kasich campaign declined to return the favor in Florida.

As long ago as last September, when Scott Walker dropped out of the presidential race, he did so in attempt to consolidate the field to stop Trump.

The deal between the two campaigns came 36 hours before the opening of polls in the so-called Acela Primary, comprising five states in the northeast and mid-Atlantic. Trump is expected to dominate in these states and both Cruz and Kasich are likely to be shut out in the bound-delegate chase in at least three of the states holding contests on Tuesday. However, because 54 of the 71 delegates elected in Pennsylvania will be unbound and free to vote for any candidate, Trump’s rivals could still gain there.