Despite landslide victories on Tuesday, Donald Trump still needs to win Indiana — and he’s starting to act like it.

The frugal Manhattan mogul has begun opening his wallet for the air war, spending more than $900,000 on TV and radio ads. He’s working the inside game, wooing Gov. Mike Pence one-on-one in what multiple Indiana insiders said appears to have been a successful effort to keep the governor on the endorsement sidelines. And Trump’s new campaign strategist Paul Manafort has been telling Republican officials, multiple people told POLITICO, that Trump is in the midst of doubling the ground team there, with plans to balloon his in-state operation to 40 people.


The sudden infusion of operatives, cash and attention is a sign of Indiana’s fulcrum position in the Republican primary fight. Trump can’t win the nomination there. But it’s where he could lose it.

A 40-person state operation would be one of Trump’s most notable investments in a field program of the cycle. And Manafort clearly has an interest in proving to GOP insiders that his candidate is willing to fund a more robust campaign operation, both to lock up the nomination and to demonstrate that he’s ready to do what it takes to win a general election expected to cost each side more than $1 billion. But sources close to the campaign cast doubt on Manafort’s closed-door claims about Indiana, asserting he was exaggerating both the current head count and the planned one.

“We’re doing the same things we’ve done in the other states,” said one Trump operative. Those sources questioned whether the last-minute ramp up would have an impact before the May 3 primary. “Typical political embellishment,” said a second campaign source of Manafort’s claims. “I’m not sure we have that many that could get there and actually be productive. It’s too short of a timeline.”

Indiana is critical. If Trump doesn’t carry the state and most of its 57 delegates on May 3, his path to lock up the 1,237 delegates he needs would require a near-sweep of California — a tall task with 53 independent congressional district elections — or picking off another state or two where he’s currently not favored, such as South Dakota or Montana.

It’s why Ted Cruz has dug into Indiana as well. He’s been rumbling across the state on yet another bus tour. His father has been riling up Christian conservative voters. And his Houston headquarters has informed Indiana supporters that he’ll be camped out in the state almost continuously until it votes on May 3. Cruz even cut a deal with John Kasich to clear the way in Indiana for the two-man contest against Trump he’s long craved.

“Indiana is clearly key,” said Saul Anuzis, a senior Cruz adviser focused on the delegate war. “It’s a swing-state in this process.”

It’s even more crucial for Cruz to slow Trump’s momentum after his domination across the northeast on Tuesday. Both men had already turned their attention there, as Trump held an event with legendary basketball coach Bobby Knight in Indianapolis on Tuesday and Cruz countered with a rally in the famed gym from the movie Hoosiers in Knightstown.

"We have decided to go all in on the state of Indiana," Cruz told Indianapolis radio host Tony Katz as he campaigned there Tuesday.

Cruz is hoping for a replay of Wisconsin, another Midwestern state where a united GOP front helped him defeat Trump on April 5. Outside groups are again pouring in money for TV ads, including the anti-Trump Our Principles PAC, the Club for Growth (a $1.5 million ad buy), and the pro-Cruz Trusted Leadership PAC ($1.6 million).

But the Indiana GOP establishment is not as united against Trump. Pence, who has met privately with both Trump and Cruz, is now expected to sit out the race, according to several Republicans close to him. One source close to Pence said he still had not formally ruled out weighing in. But he is up for reelection this year and doesn’t want to alienate any constituents.

“Why would you want to endorse one person over another when you’re trying to win the support of Hoosiers no matter who they support?” said Marsha Coats, the Republican National Committeewoman from Indiana and the wife of retiring Sen. Dan Coats. “Why would you want to do that?”

Trump has topped Cruz in the three most recent Indiana public polls, with leads ranging from 5 to 8 percentage points. But all those surveys came before the nonaggression pact that Cruz and Kasich struck in which the Ohio governor agreed not to campaign in his neighboring state in order to deny Trump a win.

The Sunday night deal sent shockwaves across the state’s landscape. State Rep. Dave Ober, a Kasich backer, said his phone began blowing up with text messages after it was struck. The problem? He’d already voted. “This election is garbage,” he tapped out on Twitter in frustration.

Ober is hardly alone. More than 66,000 Indianans had returned their ballots as of Tuesday, according to the secretary of state, almost all of whom had voted before the accord. If Kasich’s support in the polls is accurate, that’s about 10,000 votes for him — enough to make a difference in a close race.

“I voted around the 14th of April,” Ober said in an interview. “I’ve come to terms with the strategy,” he said of Kasich’s withdrawal.

Christine Matthews, a Republican pollster with deep experience in Indiana who worked for Kasich earlier this cycle, said it is too early to know how much of Kasich’s support — roughly 15 to 20 percent of the electorate — will embrace the Texas senator. “Will a Kasich voter turn into a Cruz voter because the greater cause is to stop Trump?” she said. “That’s the big question.”

Kasich was still telling supporters after the deal that they “ought to vote for me,” as pro-Cruz super PACs rain down anti-Kasich TV ads statewide. At least some of those spots are presumably spilling into Kasich's home state.

“We didn’t make a deal that he wasn’t authorized to spend money foolishly,” Kasich adviser Charlie Black said of Cruz. “We just agreed that we wouldn’t."

Cruz, meanwhile, has pushed aggressively to debate Trump before the Indiana primary, accusing him of wanting “to cower in Trump Tower.” Cruz has complained that the last Republican debate was on March 10 — back when Marco Rubio was still in the race.

But Trump has shown no sign of budging. "How many times can you have the same people asking the same questions?” he said earlier this week.

Cruz’s team knows the Indiana political landscape well. Jeff Roe, his campaign manager, was a top consultant to GOP insurgent Richard Mourdock when he felled Sen. Richard Lugar in a 2012 primary, as was Jason Miller, another senior Cruz adviser. In recent weeks, the Cruz campaign has sought to activate the state’s evangelical political network, with Cruz’s father, Rafael, traveling to Indiana’s farthest corners.

Curt Smith, president of the Indiana Family Institute and a Cruz backer, has helped organize some of the elder Cruz’s stops at churches, Christian coffee shops and hotel ballrooms. Smith said Cruz doesn’t stump explicitly for his son but “makes an amazing presentation about the need for biblical citizenship.”

“It’s helping people understand the need to be active, the need to be engaged," Smith said.

So far, Trump has campaigned mostly around the state’s population center of Indianapolis, while Cruz has traveled to far more media markets. The state has nine congressional districts that will award three delegates to the winner of each, along with 30 delegates to the statewide winner. The rules mean that the statewide winner will likely emerge with at least 45 of the 57 delegates.

Trump is playing catch up, as he has been almost everywhere on the ground. He tapped Rex Early, a former state party chair, as chairman of the campaign only three weeks ago, and hired Suzanne Jaworowski, a former supporter of Carly Fiorina, as his state director. Neither returned requests for comment.

The Trump campaign has regularly shuffled staff from states that just held primaries to the next one, and they are planning to do so again in Indiana. But one campaign source argued it’s already too late to relocate numerous people from the northeastern states that voted Tuesday to Indiana in less than a week.

“It would be a logistical mess,” the person said.

Kenneth P. Vogel contributed to this report.