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          Michigan Big Prize as Candidates Try to Catch Trump, Clinton

   by VOA News

   Republican presidential candidates are competing in four states Tuesday
   with polls showing Donald Trump likely to extend his lead in the race
   for the party's nomination.

   The biggest prize is Michigan and its 59 delegates.  Candidates will
   win a share of those delegates based on their proportion of Tuesday's
   voting, just as they will with the 91 total delegates available in
   Mississippi, Idaho and Hawaii.

   Going into Tuesday, Trump led Texas Senator Ted Cruz by 82 delegates.
   Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Ohio Governor John Kasich were far
   behind, and are hoping for big wins next week in their home states to
   boost their campaigns.

   In the Democratic race, primaries are only being held in Michigan and
   Mississippi.  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held big leads
   in polls in both states over Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

   Clinton holds a huge delegate lead and in recent campaign events has
   talked about a potential matchup against Trump in the November general
   election.

   She told supporters Monday in Michigan the sooner she becomes the
   Democratic nominee, the more she can focus on the Republicans.

   Also Monday, the unpredictable race to take over the White House at the
   end of President Barack Obama's term got a little clarity with former
   billionaire and former three-term New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg
   announcing he will not make a third-party run.

   Bloomberg spent months considering running as an independent, but said
   in an editorial posted by the Bloomberg View that he does not believe
   he could win the election and that there would be a good chance his
   candidacy would lead to Trump or Cruz getting elected.

   "That is not a risk I can take in good conscience," he added.

   The 74-year-old Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Democrat-turned
   independent, lambasted Trump, saying, "He has run the most divisive and
   demagogic presidential campaign I can remember, preying on people's
   prejudices and fears."

   ''

   New ad campaigns

   In an effort to block Trump from capturing the party's 2016
   presidential nomination, conservative and Republican groups are
   mounting acerbic new television advertising campaigns.

   In all, several anti-Trump organizations say they plan to spend at
   least $10 million in the next week on the ads.  Many of them are aimed
   at voters in the southeastern state of Florida and the midwestern state
   of Illinois, two big states where Republicans are holding March 15
   party nominating elections and political surveys show Trump with leads
   over his remaining three opponents.

   The ads characterize Trump as a liberal out of touch with the dominant
   conservative character of the Republican party, a military draft
   dodger, and a tycoon with little empathy for the powerless who have
   stood in the path of his business empire.

   Club for Growth Action, a conservative, anti-tax organization, has one
   ad running in Florida, saying Trump "hides behind bankruptcy laws to
   duck paying his bills and kill American jobs.  He even tried to kick an
   elderly widow out of her home through eminent domain.  Real tough guy."

   Another group, American Future Fund, called Trump, a one-time
   television reality show host, a draft dodger who has disparaged
   American prisoners-of-war captured by the North Vietnamese more than
   four decades ago and "hasn't served his country a day in his life.
   Donald Trump is a phony.  Stop him now."

   Rather than respond to the ad campaign against him with television ads
   of his own, Trump said he would continue to attack his opponents with
   tweets from his Twitter account.

   "We cannot let the failing Republican establishment, who could not stop
   Obama, ruin the movement with millions of dollars in false ads!" Trump
   said Monday.

   Trump, who has never held elective office, is the front-runner in the
   chase to win a majority of delegates to July's Republican national
   convention to claim the party's presidential nomination even before it
   starts, although his closest challenger, Cruz, has edged closer to
   Trump in the delegate count after splitting contests with him in four
   states on Saturday.

   ''

   'The momentum is shifting'

   Influential figures in the Republican party, including its losing 2012
   nominee, Mitt Romney, are trying to block Trump's unexpected,
   months-long surge to the top of the Republican field, fearing that he
   would lose November's national election to Clinton and possibly imperil
   Republican control of Congress.

   In an odd twist of fortune for the party, not all the anti-Trump
   activists are enamored either about Cruz, a conservative agitator in
   the halls of Congress who at various times has aimed his barbs at both
   Republican and Democratic leaders.

   Cruz, however, has emerged as perhaps the best, last alternative to
   Trump and the new ads have only one target, the 69-year-old Trump.

   "The momentum is shifting away from Donald Trump," said Club for Growth
   chief David McIntosh. "Overwhelming wins by Senator Ted Cruz in Kansas
   and Maine, and a delegate tie in Louisiana showed that Republican
   voters don't want a big-government liberal like Donald Trump at the top
   of the (Republican) ticket. They know that Trump would cost Republicans
   the White House, the Senate majority, and, ultimately, the Supreme
   Court."

   A Supreme Court vacancy exists because of the death last month of
   Justice Antonin Scalia, for 30 years a conservative stalwart on the
   country's highest court.  The country's Democratic president, Barack
   Obama, is planning to name a replacement soon, but Republicans say they
   plan to block the nomination and want to leave the choice to the next
   president in hopes that a Republican wins the White House.

   Trump is calling for Rubio, who has won only two nominating contests so
   far, to drop out of the presidential campaign, a demand he has
   rebuffed.  Both Trump and Cruz say they want the race to be narrowed to
   a contest between the two of them.
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   [1]http://www.voanews.com/content/michigan-big-prize-as-candidates-try-
   to-catch-trump-clinton/3225404.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/michigan-big-prize-as-candidates-try-to-catch-trump-clinton/3225404.html