MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – Republican Ted Cruz won the Wisconsin presidential primary on Tuesday, dealing a blow to front-runner Donald Trump’s hopes of amassing the delegates needed for the party’s nomination ahead of the July convention and boosting the chances of a rare contested convention.

Cruz’s win was a breakthrough for Republican Party forces battling to block the controversial New York billionaire, and it raised the prospect of a prolonged nominating fight that could last to the July convention.

Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders also won in Wisconsin, gaining momentum in his fight against front-runner Hillary Clinton and trimming her commanding lead in delegates.

Trump had 737 convention delegates to Cruz’s 481 heading into the vote, leaving him 500 delegates short of the 1,237 needed to become the party’s nominee in the Nov. 8 election. Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, the other remaining Republican contender, hope to stop Trump short of a first-ballot victory and trigger a contested convention.

Cruz, a conservative U.S. senator from Texas, was aided in Wisconsin by the backing of Republican Governor Scott Walker, who had dropped his own presidential bid in September. Party establishment figures, worried that Trump will lead Republicans to a broad defeat in November, have banded together to try to stop him.

The Wisconsin primary followed a difficult week for Trump, who was forced to backtrack after saying women who have abortions should face punishment if the procedure is outlawed, and who voiced support for his campaign manager after he was charged with misdemeanour assault for grabbing a reporter.

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll on Tuesday showed Cruz about even with Trump nationally, with Cruz’s recent gains the first time since November that a Trump rivals has threatened his standing at the head of the Republican pack.

The poll, taken April 1 to 5, showed Cruz winning the support of 35 percent of Republicans to Trump’s 39 percent, within the credibility interval for the survey of 568 Republicans. Cruz and Trump were also briefly about even early last week.

As recently as a month ago, when Senator Marco Rubio was also still a candidate, Cruz trailed Trump by about 20 points.

In the Democratic race, the win for Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, is his sixth in the last seven presidential nominating contests, but he still faces a difficult task to overtake Clinton as the presidential nominating race moves to New York on April 19 and to five other Eastern states on April 26.

 (Additional reporting by Eric Beech and Amanda Becker in Washington, Chris Kahn in New York; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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DAYTON, Ohio (Reuters) – Secret Service officers rushed on stage to protect U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump during a disturbance at a rally on Saturday, a day after rowdy protests shut down his event in Chicago.

Trump briefly ducked at the podium and four Secret Service members scrambled to surround him after a man charged the stage at Dayton International Airport in Ohio.

Officers then grabbed the man, dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, before he was able to reach the stage and hauled him away.

“I was ready. I don’t know if I would have done well but I would have been out there fighting, folks,” Trump told a rally later in the day. He said the man “was looking to do harm.”

The incident further increased tension after Trump’s Chicago rally was scrapped amid chaotic scenes on Friday.

Trump’s Republican rivals hurled scorn at the New York billionaire, saying he helped create the nervous atmosphere that is now sweeping the race for the White House with his fiery rhetoric.

Trump blamed supporters of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders for the incidents in Chicago, where scuffles broke out between protesters and backers of the real estate magnate. He called the U.S. senator from Vermont “our communist friend.”

The scenes in Chicago followed a series of recent incidents of violence at Trump rallies, in which protesters and journalists have been punched, tackled and hustled out of venues, raising concerns about degrading security leading into the Nov. 8 election.

“All of a sudden a planned attack just came out of nowhere,” Trump said in Dayton, describing the events in Chicago. He called the protest leaders there “professional people”.

Sanders, a U.S. Senator from Vermont, hit back.

“As is the case virtually every day, Donald Trump is showing the American people that he is a pathological liar. Obviously, while I appreciate that we had supporters at Trump’s rally in Chicago, our campaign did not organize the protests.”

President Barack Obama told a fundraising event in Dallas  that political leaders “should be trying to bring us together and not turning us against one another.”

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton drew criticism for releasing an initial statement that did not mention Trump by name and tied violent campaign events to a shooting in a South Carolina black church last year that left 9 people dead.

While campaigning in St. Louis, Missouri, on Saturday, Clinton criticized Trump directly for “ugly, divisive rhetoric” that encourages aggression and violence.

CRUCIAL PRIMARIES

The months-long Republican race may be coming to a head at nominating contests on Tuesday where Trump is seeking victories that might give him an almost insurmountable lead for the nomination.

Primaries in Florida and Ohio will be particularly important since they are winner-take-all states, where all Republican delegates are given to the winner of the popular vote instead of being awarded proportionally.

It will be a make-or-break day for Republican candidates John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who both must win their home states to forge a credible path forward.

Trump has drawn fervent support as well as criticism for his calls to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and to impose a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country.

His rallies often attract small groups of protesters, but Friday’s was the first at which there may have been as many protesters as supporters.

At an event in Kansas City on Saturday, Trump urged police to arrest people who disrupt his events.

“They’ll have to explain to Mom and Dad why they have a police record and why they can’t get a job. And you know what? I’m going to start pressing charges against all these people and then we won’t have a problem,” he said to cheers.

Outside the rally, police broke up confrontations between Trump supporters and protesters who shouted, “Shut it down!”

Police on horseback and riot gear briefly moved into a crowd of protesters and officers used what appeared to be pepper spray against demonstrators for a few seconds.

Rubio, who according to the New York Times slightly edged out Kasich on Saturday to win the Washington D.C. primary with 37 percent of the vote, bemoaned the state of the presidential race during an event in Florida, saying it had “become reality television.”

“Last night in Chicago, we saw images that make America look like a Third World country,” Rubio said, reminding supporters the stakes on Tuesday are high.

Kasich told journalists before a campaign event in Cincinnati, Ohio, that Trump had created a “toxic environment.”

Republican candidate U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas called the Chicago incidents “sad.”

Vanderbilt University political scientist John Geer said that the tension on display at Trump’s events are a proxy for what is going on in the electorate writ large.

“People have strong reactions to Donald Trump,” Geer said. “They are playing out in the voting booth and they are also playing out at these events.”

Geer said the Chicago cancellation would likely embolden Trump’s supporters – an idea floated by Trump in several television interviews.

Clinton picked up four delegates in the Northern Mariana Islands’ Democratic primary on Saturday, to Sanders’ two.

On the Republican side, Cruz won around two-thirds of the votes in Wyoming’s Republican nominating contest but because of the state’s unusual rules it is not clear how many Wyoming delegates will go his way at the Republican Convention in July.

(Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, Kevin Murphy in Kansas City, Idrees Ali and Amanda Becker in Washington.; Editing by Alistair Bell and Sandra Maler)

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Near the end of a Michigan debate that featured sharp clashes over trade and the auto industry bailout, as well as a lengthy discussion of religion, Clinton and Sanders both said they could not wait to face the brash billionaire in the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

“I think Donald Trump’s bigotry, his bullying, his bluster, are not going to wear well on the American people,” Clinton said. “We have to end the divisiveness, we have to unify the country.”

Sanders said he would “love” to run against Trump and noted many opinion polls showed him faring better against him than Clinton did. He and Clinton urged voters to compare the substance of their debate with the Republican versions, which last week featured name-calling and Trump defending his penis size.

“We are, if elected president, going to invest a lot of money in mental health,” Sanders said, then cracked a joke. “And when you watch these Republican debates, you know why we need to invest in mental health.”

Trump frequently says he will beat either Clinton or Sanders. “I am the one person that she does not want to run against,” he said of Clinton on Saturday.

The debate in Flint, which is suffering a water contamination and public health crisis, came as Sanders has struggled to slow Clinton’s march to the presidential nomination. Sanders picked up some good news on Sunday with a projected win in Maine’s caucus.

Clinton, 68, a former secretary of state and first lady, has spoken on the campaign trail of the need for more love and kindness, a contrast to Trump’s rhetoric about his plans to deport illegal immigrants and temporarily bar Muslims from entering the country.

“I don’t intend to get into the gutter with whoever they nominate, but instead to lift our sights,” Clinton said in the debate.

Describing herself as a “praying person,” she said it was hard to imagine living under the pressure of the White House “without being able to fall back on prayer and on my faith.”

Sanders, asked if he was deliberately keeping his Jewish faith in the background on the campaign trail, said his father’s family was wiped out in the Holocaust. He described going shopping with his mother as a boy in Brooklyn, New York, and seeing people with numbers on their arms from Nazi concentration camps.

“I am very proud of being Jewish, and that is an essential part of who I am as a human being,” Sanders said.

‘DISASTROUS’ TRADE POLICIES

Earlier, the two candidates exchanged angry jabs over trade, with Sanders accusing Clinton of backing “disastrous” trade policies that moved manufacturing jobs out of cities like Flint and Detroit and shifted them overseas.

But Clinton said Sanders’ opposition to the 2009 auto bailout, a crucial issue in a state that is home to the U.S. auto industry, would have cost millions of jobs. The bailout, which Clinton supported, passed Congress and has been credited with helping save the U.S. industry.

Sanders, 74 a U.S. senator from Vermont and democratic socialist, also questioned the sincerity of Clinton’s conversion to opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed 12-nation Pacific Rim trade deal.

The two contenders cut each other off on several occasions, a rare occurrence in a race that has been much more polite than the raucous Republican presidential campaign.

“Excuse me, I’m talking,” Sanders said to Clinton when she tried to interrupt. “If you’re going to talk, tell the whole story,” Clinton responded.

Sanders pressed his charge that Clinton was too close to Wall Street and demanded again that she release the transcript of paid speeches she has given to Wall Street firms. Clinton said she would release them when all the candidates, including Republicans, also release transcripts of similar talks.

‘THERE AIN’T NOTHING!’

Throwing up his hands, Sanders said: “I’ll release it. Here it is. There ain’t nothing! I don’t give speeches to Wall Street!”

The debate was held in Flint to highlight the city’s water contamination crisis, and both candidates expressed outrage at Flint’s plight and demanded Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s resignation.

The crisis in Flint, a predominantly black city of 100,000, was triggered when an emergency city manager installed by Snyder switched the city’s water supply to the nearby Flint River from Lake Michigan to save money.

The change corroded Flint’s aging pipes and released lead and other toxins into the water supply, exposing thousands of residents including children to high lead levels that have sparked serious health problems.

(Additional reporting by Alana Wise, Luciana Lopez and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Caren Bohan and Peter Cooney)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz split victories in four nominating contests with front-runner Donald Trump on Saturday, bolstering Cruz’s argument that he represents the party’s best chance to stop the brash New York billionaire.

The results were a repudiation of a Republican establishment that has bristled at the prospect of either Cruz or Trump winning the party’s nomination and has largely lined up behind U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who was shut out in all four contests.

“I think it’s time that he dropped out of the race,” Trump said of Rubio after the contests. “I want Ted one on one.”

Cruz won Kansas and Maine on Saturday, while Trump won the bigger states of Louisiana and Kentucky, holding onto his lead in the race for the Republican nomination for the Nov. 8 presidential election, even though Cruz captured more delegates on Saturday.

The next big contest, and a crucial one, will be Tuesday’s primary in the industrial state of Michigan. Republicans in three other states, Mississippi, Idaho and Hawaii, also will vote on Tuesday. Puerto Rico Republicans will vote on Sunday.

In the Democratic race, front-runner Hillary Clinton won in Louisiana, and her rival Bernie Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, won in Kansas and Nebraska, in results that did not substantially change Clinton’s big delegate lead.

Mainstream Republicans have blanched at Trump’s calls to build a wall on the border with Mexico, round up and deport 11 million undocumented immigrants and temporarily bar all Muslims from entering the United States.

But the party’s establishment has not been much happier with Cruz, who has alienated many party leaders in Washington.

“It looks like it will be the angry Trump voters against the purist conservative Cruz voters,” said Washington-based Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. “The establishment is just being left out.”

A spokesman for Rubio, who spent the past week launching harsh personal attacks on Trump, said the senator would push on with an eye on the March 15 contest in Florida.

“After we win the Florida primary, the map, the momentum and the money is going to be on our side,” spokesman Alex Conant said in a statement.

Cruz, a first-term U.S. senator from Texas who has promoted himself as more of a true conservative than Trump, said the results showed he was gaining momentum in the race to catch the real estate mogul.

Cruz, 45, has run as an outsider bent on shaking up the Republican establishment in Washington. A favorite of evangelicals, he has called for the United States to “carpet bomb” the Islamic State militant group and has pledged to eliminate the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service and four cabinet agencies and to enact a balanced budget amendment

“A HOWL FROM WASHINGTON”

“The scream you hear, the howl that comes from Washington, D.C., is utter terror at what ‘We the People’ are doing together,” Cruz told supporters in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, after his early win in Kansas.

“What we’re seeing is the public coming together, libertarians coming together, men and women who love the Constitution coming together and uniting and standing as one behind this campaign,” Cruz said.

Trump, 69, has a substantial lead in the delegates needed to secure the nomination at the Republican National Convention, but since winning seven of the 11 contests on Super Tuesday he has come under withering fire from a Republican establishment worried he will lead the party to defeat in November’s election.

But endorsements from establishment Republicans have failed to sway voters. Rubio won the backing of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback but still came in third there.

The four Republican contests on Saturday together accounted for just 155 delegates. Cruz won 64 delegates on Saturday, while Trump took 49.

The races on Saturday were open only to registered Republicans, excluding the independent and disaffected Democratic voters who have helped Trump’s surge to the lead.

The anti-Trump forces have a short window to stop the caustic businessman, who ahead of Saturday had accumulated 319 of the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination at July’s Republican national convention, outpacing Cruz, who had 226 delegates.

On March 15, the delegate-rich states of Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina will vote. Both Florida and Ohio use the winner-take-all method to allocate Republican delegates, making the stakes in those states particularly high. All of the Republican contests on Saturday, and through March 14, award delegates proportionate to the popular vote, although some states set minimum thresholds to qualify for any delegates.

If Trump takes both Florida and Ohio he would be nearly impossible to stop. There are a total of 358 delegates at stake in the five states voting March 15, including 99 in Florida and 66 in Ohio.

On the Democratic side, Clinton has opened up a big delegate lead and Sanders might have a tough time making up the difference. All states in the Democratic race award their delegates proportionally, meaning Clinton can keep piling up delegates even in states she loses.

The three states holding Democratic contests on Saturday had a total of 109 delegates at stake. The early estimates were that Clinton, who appeared headed to a smashing nearly 50-point win in Louisiana, had won at least 48 delegates on Tuesday and Sanders 37.

But Sanders made it clear he was not planning to end his White House quest anytime soon.

“We have the momentum. We have a path toward victory. Our campaign is just getting started,” he said in a statement after his wins on Saturday.

(Additional reporting by Emily Flitter, Jonathan Allen and Alana Wise; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Leslie Adler)

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