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 Cruz, a first-term U.S. senator from Texas, is trying to make the
case he is the last remaining Republican candidate not named Trump
with a pathway to the party's presidential nomination and the best
choice left for Republicans who cannot bring themselves to vote for
the New York billionaire.
Wisconsin will be a test of whether his strategy will work. Opinion
polls show he has opened up a lead on front-runner Trump, with a
third candidate, Ohio Governor John Kasich, running third.
"The entire country is looking to Wisconsin," Cruz said on Monday.
“What we are seeing in Wisconsin is the unity of the Republican
Party manifested.”
Trump brought his wife, Melania, on stage on Monday night in
Milwaukee, an apparent effort to repair his image with women who
polls show overwhelmingly oppose him.
"No matter who you are, a man or a woman, he respects everyone
equal," she told the crowd.
 In the Democratic race, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has a
slender lead in opinion polls in Wisconsin over front-runner Hillary
Clinton and is trying to add to his momentum after winning five of
the last six contests. He still faces a tough task in defeating the
favored Clinton for the nomination for the Nov. 8 election.
Playing a party uniter is an unlikely role for Cruz, who forced the
U.S. government to shut down for six days in 2013 in a budget fight
with Democratic President Barack Obama. Republicans ended up being
blamed for the shutdown and Cruz's relationship with Senate
Republicans leaders has been stormy.
But enmity toward Trump among many is such that Cruz can now count
five of his former rivals for the presidential nomination among his
backers, including U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina,
who said earlier this year that the choice between Trump and Cruz
"is like being shot or poisoned."
Cruz has taken steps to warm up his image. He told Fox News anchor
Megyn Kelly in a town hall on Monday in Madison, Wisconsin, that he
wished he had done a "better job reaching out" to his Senate
colleagues and building a broader coalition. 'FEVERED PIPE DREAM'
But he is as strident as ever when it comes to the presidential
race. He told reporters that only he and Trump had the ability to
earn the 1,237 delegates necessary to win the nomination outright.
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He said if no candidate received the required number of delegates,
Republicans' choices at a contested nominating convention in July
would be limited to him and Trump, because Kasich had not won the
minimum eight states to get on the convention ballot.
Cruz rejected talk that establishment Republicans might seek to
nominate a new face at the convention, with names circulating like
House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan or 2012 nominee Mitt
Romney. He called it a "fevered pipe dream of Washington that at the
convention they will parachute in some white knight."
"It ain’t going to happen. If it did, the people would quite rightly
revolt," said Cruz.
Some of Cruz's supporters doubt a brokered convention would lead to
a White House victory over the Democratic nominee in November.
"It would destroy the party," said Brandon Meese at a Cruz rally in
Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Sunday.
While Cruz may carry the day in Wisconsin, it does not get any
easier for him. The next states to vote, including New York on April
19 and five Northeastern states on April 26, are more Trump-friendly
territory.
Cruz has 463 delegates, 774 short of the total needed for the
nomination, according to an Associated Press count. Kasich, with 143
delegates, has no chance to gather enough delegates to win on the
first ballot but has refused to end his candidacy.
(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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