MILWAUKEE — Sixteen miles separated Donald Trump and Ted Cruz on Monday night, but the distance between them felt much greater.

Trump, the national front-runner, arrived to a half-empty auditorium at the Milwaukee Theatre in a defensive crouch, beaten down by days of bad headlines and growing signs that Wisconsin — and perhaps even his best shot at winning the GOP nomination outright — was slipping from his grasp. He had his wife, Melania, make a rare campaign speech in the hopes that she might extinguish the recent fierce criticism over his remarks regarding women. She spoke for only two minutes, reading from notes.


Trump was not in his usual loquacious mood, at least initially. “I know you have a baseball game and a basketball game, we’re going to go really quickly tonight,” Trump began, as he looked out at empty balconies.

In the nearby suburb of Waukesha, the scene was much different.

Cruz, the challenger, was energized, reveling in the support of the Wisconsin political establishment, prominent talk radio hosts and evangelical leaders — a powerful alliance that, polls show, have him on the precipice of a blowout win. While he trails in overall victories, Cruz boldly predicted Monday that Wisconsin would be “a turning point” in the race.

“The entire country, its eyes are on the state of the Wisconsin,” Cruz said, pushing to further raise the stakes in the state. He only took the stage after a parade of prominent endorsers, including Scott Walker, Carly Fiorina, and influential conservative talk-radio host Charlie Sykes, sung his praises and pilloried Trump.

It was a fired-up the crowd in the key GOP suburb that repeatedly bellowed out Cruz’s name in a collective baritone, as if he were a star ballplayer (“Cruuuuuuuuuz.”). Cruz himself was feeling so confident that he even waded into unusual territory with a Trump hair joke, suggesting that Walker could put Trump in the sidecar of his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

“You’re right, it would mess up his hair,” Cruz said, responding to someone in the crowd. Then Cruz added, "Actually, I don’t know that it would."

The final events for the two Republican candidates before Wisconsin’s primary day arrives were reflective of both contenders’ standing in the state: Cruz has the momentum, as Trump is scrambling to catch up — and get through the day.

While Cruz brought key Wisconsin leaders, Trump was introduced by only two surrogates — a pastor and a former Senate staffer—and the crowd size paled compared to his usual audiences. (John Kasich, befitting his second-tier status in the race, wasn’t in Wisconsin at all, already looking ahead to the future contests, as he’s done since February as his losses have continued to mount.)

For the last week, the Wisconsin primary has been dominated by negative coverage of Trump’s posture toward women, as Cruz has made not-so-subtle attempts to drive a wedge between the GOP front-runner and half the electorate.

First, Trump threatened to “spill the beans” on Cruz’s wife on Twitter, and then he sent a controversial retweet of an unflattering picture her. His campaign manager was charged with simple battery for grabbing a female reporter. And then Trump said that women should be punished for illegal abortions (and subsequently backtracked on the assertion).

"You may have heard that Donald Trump has a woman problem,” Sykes said at the Cruz rally Monday night. "Gee, I wonder why.”

Trump tried to address the situation at his own Monday rally, as he was joined onstage by his wife, Melania, who described him with a string of supportive adjectives: tough, smart, kind, as well as a “great communicator” and “great negotiator.”

“No matter who you are, a man or a woman, he treats everyone equal,” Melania Trump said, though the crowd cheered loudest when she remarked, “as you may know by now, when you attack him, he will punch back ten times harder.”

She was followed by Melissa Young, a former Miss Wisconsin who received assistance from Trump as she battled illness.

Those two women dominated the first 10 or so minutes of his rally, which lasted for less than an hour in total. Trump’s surrogates also appeared sensitive to the criticism that Trump was struggling with women.

“Betcha there’s a few women in the building tonight that love Donald Trump!” Pastor Mark Burns said earlier as he warmed up the crowd. A smattering of women in what was then a quarter-full auditorium cheered. He continued, “We will not be dictated by the media!”

Cruz, for his part, has dispatched several prominent female surrogates across Wisconsin: his wife, Fiorina, Wisconsin first lady Tonette Walker all campaigned here for him. And on Monday, Cruz pointedly took part in a town hall with Fox News' Megyn Kelly, the network’s most prominent female journalist and Trump’s most prominent journalistic nemesis.

"She totally misrepresents my words and positions! BAD.” Trump had tweeted of Kelly just last Friday.

Cruz’s lighthearted mood Monday matched one of a man headed to victory as he was joined by Heidi Cruz and his two daughters at the Mars Cheese Castle, sampling jalapeno cheese bread and aged cheddar, urging reporters to try the fare, and laughingly refusing to wear a cheesehead, the iconic Wisconsin hat shaped like a block of cheese, as his daughter tried to put it on his head.

“There is an ironclad rule of politics, which is, no funny hats,” he told reporters as he dug into the cheddar samples. “And any hat is by definition defined as a funny hat. Michael Dukakis powerfully demonstrated that when he put on a helmet and when he rode in a tank.”

He added, “I think the people of Wisconsin wear their cheese heads so powerfully, that I would not presume to intrude in the elegance with which the people of Wisconsin wear those hats.”

He had two different retail stops Monday, where he talked up his love of cheese — which he insists isn’t a Wisconsin pander — as well as a town hall and a rally. Trump has spent the last several days ramping up his schedule with a mix of rallies and retail stops — an earlier rally drew thousands, he said — though has not campaigned in the state for as long, or as aggressively, as Cruz has.

Still, Trump said here Monday that a friend told him he could win Wisconsin.

“I said, ‘But I’m not seeing polls that are great, I’m a little bit down, I’m down in some, I’m a little bit down,’” Trump said. “He said, ‘No, you’re going to win, but you have to be here, you have to come in, you have to talk to the people.'”

So, Trump continued, “I’ve been making speeches, three today, four the other day. We’re here constantly, you’re going to get so sick of me, you’re going to say, ‘get the hell out of here.’”

Around half an hour later, he was gone.

