Cruz spoils Trump’s Super Saturday 'I want Ted, one on one,' Trump says as rival emerges as main alternative to the front-runner.

By POLITICO Magazine

Ted Cruz delivered two crushing defeats on Saturday and denied Donald Trump big wins everywhere, rounding up a delegate haul he hopes will drive low-polling rivals toward the exit.

Cruz scored huge upsets, easily taking Kansas with 48.2 percent of the vote to Trump’s 23.3 percent and Maine, notching 45.8 percent to Trump’s 32.6 percent.

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Trump eked out narrow wins in Kentucky -- 35 percent to 31 percent – and in Louisiana, with about 42 percent to Cruz’s 37 percent.

“We saw on Tuesday, the Super Tuesday results that were extraordinary. And today on Super Saturday, we seem to be seeing a continuation of that very same path,” Cruz told supporters gathered in Idaho, which will vote March 8.

“What we’re seeing is conservatives coming together," he said.

It’s a common refrain from the senator, who has relentlessly argued that he is the only viable alternative to Trump. Saturday's results offered evidence he could be right, as he narrowed the delegate gap between his campaign and Trump's and showed a better ability to get conservative voters to the polls than his competitors.

Trump agreed, calling on Marco Rubio to drop out and welcoming a two-man contest with Cruz.

“I want Ted, one on one" Trump told supporters gathered in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Of the five states that have held GOP caucuses so far, this is Cruz’s fourth win, and his sixth primary contest overall. On Tuesday, he scored his home state of Texas, as well as Alaska and Oklahoma, and in February won the Iowa caucuses.

All of Saturday’s contests required participants to be registered as Republicans, with some states having earlier deadlines for that registration than others.

That hurt Trump, who has shown an ability to turn out cross-over voters with little previous record of participation.

John Kasich and Marco Rubio were left in the dust on Saturday – each notching few delegates, and Rubio being shut out completely in Maine, where he failed to jump the 10 percent hurdle.

Still, Rubio said this is exactly as his team expected and dismissed chatter that he might lose his home state of Florida on March 15.

“Tonight we will have more delegates than we did last night,” Rubio told supporters and reporters in Puerto Rico. “This map only gets better for us.”

“We’re gonna win Florida and you’ll find out on March 15 how confident we are,” he said.

Candidates have a handful of opportunities to rack up delegates in Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan and Mississippi, as well as in some territories, before the winner-take-all contests of March 15, when Trump threatens to sweep many of the big states in his march toward the Republican National Convention.

Kasich and Rubio, at this point, have no path but a brokered convention while the Cruz campaign insists it doesn't see one happening. Keeping Trump’s delegate totals down this week could prolong the nomination process, though any delegate deficit could also be compensated for on March 15.

On Saturday, a total of 155 delegates was up for grabs, all awarded proportionally. That’s the same amount that was allocated by Texas alone last Tuesday, but it is not an insignificant number: it’s also more delegates than were offered during all of February.

“This is a race that’s completely unpredictable, and every delegate matters,” said Ryan Williams, a GOP consultant familiar with the delegate process after serving as a spokesman on Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. “These contests matter, in terms of the delegate math, for each candidate. You want to pick up as many as you can before moving into winner-take-all states.”

Cruz invested time and resources organizing both Kansas and Maine, rolling out leadership teams and making last-minute visits (he visited Louisiana and had a ground game there as well).

Cruz’s win in Maine came despite the endorsement Trump received from Gov. Paul LePage, and in Kansas despite the backing Rubio received from major GOP heavyweights, including Gov. Sam Brownback and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. Trump’s troubles in those two states also stemmed from the fact that he has shown vulnerability in organization-heavy caucus states, previously losing Iowa and Alaska to Cruz and Minnesota to Rubio.

The calendar has taken candidates from Wichita, Kan. to Bangor, Maine this weekend. Cruz, hoping to shrink the delegate gap with Trump after winning three states on Super Tuesday, has kept up a hectic schedule, hitting conservative towns and suburbs.