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Cruz looks to peel delegates from Trump in New York

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Ted Cruz greets supporters Thursday after speaking at Mekeel Christian Academy in Scotia, N.Y.
Ted Cruz greets supporters Thursday after speaking at Mekeel Christian Academy in Scotia, N.Y.Mike Groll/STF

SCOTIA, N.Y. - The morning after Donald Trump held a rally with 10,000 boisterous supporters at a movie studio in Long Island, Ted Cruz rolled into a small Christian school in a working-class suburb of Schenectady, 150 miles away from the bright lights of the big city.

There were delegates to be had here, and George Amedore might be one.

The Republican state senator from the 46th District in upstate New York is a good bet to become a delegate to the national convention in Cleveland, where Cruz will need every friend he can get in what could become an open floor-fight for the GOP nomination in July.

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Publicly neutral in the race, Amedore met privately with Cruz on Thursday on his way to the rally inside the Mekeel Christian Academy gymnasium, where about 1,300 conservative Republicans showed up to hear Cruz.

"I can see the genuineness and integrity in the man," Amedore said in an interview afterward. But he would wait to hear from Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich before making any commitments.

In a state dominated by the liberal politics of New York City - what Cruz derided as "New York values" while he campaigned in Iowa - there are still wide swaths of conservative turf in the north and west that represent a chance to make inroads against the GOP front-runner, who is far ahead in statewide polls.

"My guess is that there are some delegates he can siphon in this area to keep this race going," said Joe Roof, the campus pastor at the academy of 328 students. "I was told he chose this school because he wanted to be identified with Christianity."

New York, like Texas, awards delegates to the winners of congressional districts, rewarding a granular delegate strategy that puts a premium on scrounging up supporters in the most unlikely places.

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Hours after Cruz's stop at the Christian school, he made a trip to a bakery in Brooklyn, where he made matzo with children from the Hasidic Jewish community and met local business leaders.

Offered a chance to don a matzo-making hat, Cruz declined. "It's a basic rule of politics: Be careful with hats," he said.

That wasn't the only awkward moment in his New York City tour. He was heckled at an event in a heavily Latino area of the Bronx the night before, and the cover of the New York Daily News greeted him Thursday with the headline: "Take The F U Train, Ted!"

The reception was much friendlier at the Christian school, where Cruz was treated as a victorious David to Trump's Goliath in Wisconsin two days earlier.

"Look at what happened in Wisconsin," said Debbie Bradt, a retired farmer who raises heifers and draft horses in nearby Sloansville. "Trump was favored there, too."

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An important marker for Cruz in New York will be keeping Trump under 50 percent statewide, the threshold for winning all of the state's 95 delegates. A Monmouth University poll released Wednesday put Trump at 52 percent. Cruz, at 17 percent, is running third, behind Kasich at 25 percent.

'Conservative state'

Signs of Trump's strength in his home state were visible all around Cruz, even at the carefully chosen venue of the Christian academy. Amid a small clutch of protesters across the street was substance abuse counselor Nico Vecchiarelli, a registered Republican who sees Trump as a necessary change agent.

"Trump is a radical in a lot of ways," Vecchiarelli said. "Cruz is also a radical. But Cruz reflects how the Republican Party has gone off the rails. We need to reel ourselves in. Republicans have been getting out of hand with the tea party and this Christian rhetoric. That's not a reflection of America. America is separation of church and state."

But Cruz supporters in upstate New York say the Texas senator lines up well with a region that often feels overlooked by its downstate neighbors.

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"You ever been north of New York City before?" said Craig Berndt, who was at the Cruz rally. "There's a reason you see a lot of guys wearing flannel shirts and Second Amendment hats in there. Once you get out of New York City, this is an extremely conservative state."

That dichotomy could be telling in the days leading to the New York primary on April 19.

Cruz can pick and choose his pockets of strength, but he will always be surrounded by a different brand of Republicanism than he's used to back home. Whether he can broaden his appeal in the Northeast remains to be seen.

"What's happening for Cruz, and happened in Wisconsin, is he's starting to gain some support from various groups that he wasn't gaining in other states," Amedore said. "In New York, it's going to be the same."

Amedore said there's an audience for Cruz's conservative message in New York. But, he added, Cruz also carries the baggage of his partisan battles in Washington and his comments about "New York values," which have become fodder for a Kasich television ad.

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Not everyone has been offended. Jenna Duffy, a bartender who made an hourlong trek from Hudson Falls with her husband and 15-year-old daughter, said she didn't take the comment personally.

"New York City is New York City," she said. "We're upstate. It's different up here."

The connection to Washington gridlock may hurt more, said Amedore, noting that Republican state legislative leaders and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently finalized a bipartisan budget agreement.

"Things are moving in New York, and we're doing it bipartisanly," he said. "In Washington, that's not the case."

While the crux of Cruz's appeal may be his outlier status in Washington, the senator also has been dinged by his battles there, Amedore said.

"It's about getting things done instead of shutting down government, gridlock and roadblocks, and just being a party and individuals of 'No,' " he said.

Jerilynne Kline, who showed up at the Cruz rally with a Trump sign, said she was not impressed by the senator's outsider credentials.

"I'm tired of politicians," she said. "They all lie."

She also takes Trump with a grain of salt: "Trump is a businessman. Does he say outrageous things? Absolutely. Does he get everybody's attention? Oh, yeah. Trust me, nobody's perfect. We know half the things he says he can't do. There are laws, a Constitution, advisers. He knows that. He's no dummy."

If Trump backers are inclined to see him as a can-do businessman free of the taint of Washington politics, other Republicans in the Empire State see him as an embarrassment.

"I enjoyed watching Donald Trump on 'The Apprentice,' " said Karen Whalen, a party activist from nearby Clifton Park. "That's the extent of his appeal."

Those who see Cruz as the true conservative in the race express frustration with the hype that has made Trump a dominant force in the primaries.

"The reason I like Cruz is he's not 'out there,' " said James Bucci, an industrial painting contractor who came to hear Cruz. "People don't know him for his charisma or his larger-than-life persona. The people that know him know him for his actions, his principles, his Supreme Court cases, things that all those tea party folks were supposedly all excited about a few years ago."

'They're like zombies'

At the school rally, Cruz made his pitch to "the 65 to 70 percent of Republicans across the country who recognize that Donald Trump is not the best candidate to go head-to-head with Hillary Clinton."

But some Cruz backers in the crowd suggest there's a more stubborn equation that favors the real estate mogul in New York.

"The Trump supporters are going with Trump, no matter what you do," said Bob Faughnan, a chimney sweeper from Glens Falls. "I've gone around and around with them. They're like zombies. That's done. Whether that's 40 percent or 50 percent of New York, it is what it is. We're just trying to get as many delegates as possible to hold Trump back."

At the end of Cruz's 27-minute stump speech, as he shook hands, posed for pictures and signed autographs for supporters, a group from the Princeton Evangelical Presbyterian Church stood vigil with Cruz signs and placards.

"I believe in my heart he can win New York," said Kelly More, a Cruz volunteer from the church. "He's my hope. See Wisconsin? You never know."

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Kevin Diaz came to the Houston Chronicle in February 2014 with more than a decade of experience covering Washington. Before that, he was the chief Washington correspondent for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where he got his start in journalism in 1984 as a night cops reporter. During his tenure in Minneapolis, he won awards for his coverage of gang crime and city hall. He also taught public affairs reporting at the University of Minnesota, where he received his Master’s. After a stint at the Washington (D.C.) City Paper, Kevin went back to the Star Tribune, where he won national awards for articles on globalization and immigration. He also covered the 9/11 terrorist attacks from Washington and New York. Born and raised in Italy, Kevin has reported from Italy, Brazil, Mexico, and Cuba, where he covered Jesse Ventura’s 2002 trade mission. In 2003, he filed daily Iraq War dispatches for McClatchy Newspapers from the U.S. Central Command in Qatar. In 2006, he covered the presidential election standoff in Mexico. He also has covered Washington for the Anchorage Daily News and the Idaho Statesman.