INDIANAPOLIS — Ted Cruz, the insurgent Texan whose presidential campaign was fueled by disdain for Washington, dropped out of the 2016 race Tuesday night, removing the last major hurdle in Donald Trump’s quest to become the Republican nominee for president.
Cruz’s decision came after losing overwhelmingly to Trump in the Indiana primary, all but ensuring that the real estate mogul will claim his party’s mantle at the Republican National Convention in July.
“I said I would continue on as long as there is a viable path to victory. Tonight, I’m sorry to say, it appears that path has been foreclosed,” Cruz told a small group of supporters here Tuesday night. “Together we left it all on the field in Indiana. We gave it everything we got, but the voters chose another path.”
Cruz also said he would “continue to fight for liberty,” but did not address whether he would support Trump as the nominee.
The exit comes after a series of desperate moves to keep his candidacy afloat in recent weeks, including naming former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as his running mate in a bizarre announcement where Cruz spoke for a half hour and Fiorina sang to his young daughters.
Front-runner Trump was quickly projected to be the winner by television networks shortly after polling places closed in the Midwestern state. Trump was on track to take well over 50 percent of the vote, eclipsing Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas. With 95 percent of precincts reporting, Trump had 53.2 percent of the vote, Cruz had 36.6 percent and Ohio Gov. John Kasich was running a distant third with 7.6 percent.
In the Democratic primary, with 95 percent of precincts reporting, Bernie Sanders had 52.4 percent of the vote to Hillary Clinton’s 47.6 percent.
Trump called Indiana a “tremendous victory” and immediately directed fire at Clinton.
“We’re going after Hillary Clinton,” he said. “She will not be a great president, she will not be a good president, she will be a poor president. She doesn’t understand trade.”
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus called Trump the party’s presumptive nominee in a tweet and said, “We all need to unite and focus” on defeating Clinton.
Trump declared Cruz a tough man to beat.
“Ted Cruz, I don’t know if he likes me or doesn’t like me. But he is one hell of a competitor. He is one smart guy. And he has got an amazing future,” Trump said.
Trump also sounded a note of unity, reaching out to both Hispanics and African-Americans as he talked about ensuring jobs and saying he would “make America great again.”
“This is going to be a beautiful and loving country,” Trump said.
On the Democrats side, Sanders said, “I sense a great deal of momentum.”
“We understand — and I do not deny it for one second — that we have an uphill battle in front of us,” he said. But there is a “path to victory, although it is a narrow path.”
Nonetheless, because the Democrats distribute delegates proportionately according to each candidate’s vote totals, the primary results will have little effect on the actual race.
The two candidates will split Indiana’s 83 pledged delegates roughly in half. That result benefits Clinton, who is closing in on a delegate majority.
Clinton’s campaign clearly signaled its lack of concern about the outcome here, spending no money at all on television advertising, in contrast with the roughly $1.5 million that Sanders spent.
Cruz had been counting on a win in Tuesday’s primary to slow the New York businessman’s progress toward the nomination. But Trump rode momentum from wins in five Northeastern states a week ago into a big lead in Indiana over Cruz, whose brand of Christian conservatism had been expected to have wide appeal in the state.
The loss for Cruz was a sour ending to a rough day in which he got entangled in a harsh back-and-forth with Trump.
It began when the billionaire repeated a claim published by the tabloid newspaper the National Enquirer that linked Cruz’s father, Cuban emigre Rafael Cruz, with President John F. Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
Campaigning in Evansville, in the state’s southwest corner, Cruz sounded deeply frustrated by the bombastic real estate mogul, who has ripped Cruz at every turn.
“The man cannot tell the truth but he combines it with being a narcissist,” Cruz said, “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen.”
Cruz termed Trump a “serial philanderer” — likely as part of his strategy to try to win the support of evangelical voters. Trump, in response, said Cruz had become “more and more unhinged.”
Kasich vowed to stay in the race.
“Tonight’s results are not going to alter Gov. Kasich’s campaign plans,” Kasich senior strategist John Weaver said in a campaign memo. “Our strategy has been and continues to be one that involves winning the nomination at an open convention.”
Ginger Gibson and Alana Wise of Reuters, Katie Zezima and Sean Sullivan of The Washington Post and Evan Halper and Kate Linthicum of the Tribune Washington Bureau contributed to this report.