WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Monday rejected a barrage of criticism from his own party over his allegations of bias against a Hispanic judge, insisting his concerns were valid.

“All I want to do is figure out why I’m being treated unfairly by a judge. And a lot of people agree with it,” Trump said on Fox News.

Trump has been on the defensive since his comments last week about Mexican-American U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is overseeing fraud lawsuits against Trump University, the New York businessman’s defunct real estate school.

He has also been castigated by Democrats, including the party’s likely presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

“I don’t know what else you could call these attacks other than racist, other than prejudiced, other than bigoted,” Clinton said in an interview with MSNBC on Monday. “It’s just plain wrong, and certainly wrong coming from someone who is vying to become President of the United States.”

Trump told campaign supporters in a conference call they should stand by him in his attacks on the judge, Bloomberg Politics reported. It said during the call Trump distanced himself from a memo his campaign sent supporters on Sunday that urged them to avoid the issue.

Asked for comment, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said: “It was a very positive call to discuss overall messaging.”

Two Trump supporters, Tana Goertz and Scottie Nell Hughes, told CNN that former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer had said on the call that she wanted the campaign to go on the offence against expected Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Goertz said Trump told his supporters not to be afraid to “call out the media” when TV reporters suggest that Trump is racist.

Trump has suggested that Curiel’s heritage is influencing the judge’s opinion about the case because of Trump’s campaign rhetoric about illegal immigration. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 presidential election, has pledged to seal the U.S.-Mexico border with a wall, and has said Mexico is sending rapists and drug dealers to the United States.

Former Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida, joined the chorus of criticism. In an interview with Orlando’s WFTV, Rubio called Trump’s comments wrong and said he had to stop.

“I ran for president and I warned this was going to happen,” Rubio said.

Trump has regularly stirred up controversy on the campaign trail and has frequently dismayed Republican establishment leaders. His view of an ethnically biased judiciary has drawn a fresh wave of criticism, including concern in his own party.

On Sunday he was asked if – by the same token – he believed a Muslim judge would be biased against him based on Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country. “It’s possible. Yes,” Trump said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Republican leaders including House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell have distanced themselves from Trump’s comments, saying they are worried the tone of his presidential campaign could enrage Latinos, who are a growing U.S. voting bloc.

‘BIG TROUBLE’

“If this doesn’t change we’re in for big trouble,” Senator Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, said on MSNBC on Monday. “I hope to be able to support the nominee. I certainly can’t now,” said Flake, whose state has a large percentage of Hispanics.

A former rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Ohio Governor John Kasich, called on Trump to apologise to Curiel, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrant parents.

“Attacking judges based on their race (and/or) religion is another tactic that divides our country,” Kasich wrote on Twitter. “More importantly, it is flat out wrong.”

It was unclear what, if any, effect the latest furore would have on Trump’s unorthodox candidacy. States with significant Hispanic populations including California, New Mexico and New Jersey hold nominating contests on Tuesday.

Trump fought back against his Republican critics on Monday, with especially sharp words for Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker.

Gingrich, mentioned as a possible running mate to Trump, on Sunday called Trump’s comments inexcusable.

“I was surprised at Newt,” Trump told the “Fox & Friends” program. “I thought it was inappropriate what he said.”

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Megan Cassella and Steve Holland in Washington, Angela Moon in New York; Editing by Howard Goller and Richard Pullin)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Front-runner Donald Trump said on Sunday that he will have essentially sealed the Republican U.S. presidential nomination if he wins Tuesday’s contest in Indiana, where he holds a big lead over chief rival Ted Cruz.

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist opinion poll showed Trump with a wide lead in Indiana, 49 percent to 34 percent for Cruz and 13 percent for a third candidate, Ohio Governor John Kasich.

Trump, a 69-year-old billionaire real estate developer, sounded confident in an interview on “Fox News Sunday” when asked whether Indiana would basically end the long-running Republican race in his favor.

“Yes, it’s over,” Trump said. “It’s already over.”

The poll showed the depth of the challenge facing Cruz, a conservative U.S. senator from Texas who is trying to prevent Trump from winning the 1,237 delegates needed to seal the nomination.

Cruz’s hopes rest on emerging as a consensus alternative to Trump at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 18-21. Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 68, leads U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, 74, of Vermont in the race for the Democratic nomination.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Cruz, 45, was asked several times whether he would support Trump if the New York businessman was the Republican nominee. Cruz evaded the question each time and turned the questions into an attack on broadcast media.

“I recognize that many in the media would love to see me surrender to Donald Trump because that means that Hillary wins. The media has given $2 billion in free advertising to Donald Trump,” Cruz said.

Cruz said he has momentum in Indiana based on his choice of former candidate Carly Fiorina for his vice president and Friday’s endorsement by Indiana Governor Mike Pence.

Americans will elect a successor to President Barack Obama on Nov. 8.

‘THE MOST UNELECTABLE PERSON’

Trump, who has amassed 996 delegates, according to an Associated Press count, has momentum behind him and looks increasingly likely to win the nomination outright, without a contested convention, perhaps when California votes on June 7.

Indiana has 57 Republican delegates. Three are awarded from each of the state’s nine U.S. congressional districts with the candidate who receives the most votes taking them all. The 30 others are awarded to the candidate who wins the most votes statewide.

At a rally in Terre Haute, Indiana, Trump urged Republicans to join his “movement” and turn out for him in big numbers.

“The more we can win by in Indiana is so important. It’s a mandate … a really important mandate. It’s a mandate for change, but not Obama change. Real change. It’s a mandate for genius,” he said.

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a leading Republican critic of Trump, called him the “most unelectable person” the party could nominate. Graham had sought the nomination himself.

“Keep fighting Ted,” Graham told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

CLINTON URGES SANDERS QUIT

On the Democratic side, front-runner Clinton told CNN’s “State of the Union” that rival Bernie Sanders has been “helpful” in bringing millions of people into the party’s presidential race, but it was time for him to step aside.

“There comes a time when you have to look at the reality,” said Clinton, who won four of the five Northeastern states that voted last Tuesday and who has a big lead in the delegate race ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 25-28.

But at a news conference in Washington, Sanders refused to get out, saying he believes the Democratic battle will end up in a contested convention.

Sanders said it was nearly impossible for Clinton to win the 2,383 delegates needed for nomination without superdelegates, who are unelected and free to support any candidate they wish. “We intend to fight for every vote and delegate remaining,” he said. Clinton has 2,165 to Sanders’ 1,357 delegates, according to an AP count that includes superdelegates who have said whom they support.

In his Fox interview, Trump defended at length his views on foreign policy, which he outlined in a speech last week in Washington that drew criticism for sometimes contradictory views. Trump said he would move quickly to destroy Islamic State’s militancy, but would resist interventionist policies in order to focus on nation-building at home.

Trump said “every move we made in the Middle East was wrong” over the past 15 years, with lives and money wasted. He said he would resist such policies.

Asked whether the United States should return to working with “strongmen” leaders like the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Trump said: “Isn’t it too bad that we knocked him out in the first place?”

 (Additional reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Howard Goller)

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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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NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. (Reuters) – A plan to block Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump struggled to gain traction on Friday as rival candidates rejected it, while Democrats revelled in the chaos they hoped would boost their chances of keeping the White House.

The country’s top elected Republican, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, said he was not interested in an effort to draft him into the White House race.

And U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, a conservative presidential hopeful, ruled out a deal to pick a compromise Republican candidate at the party’s July convention, which senior party figures see as their best chance to stop the unpredictable billionaire.

“The D.C. power brokers will drop someone in who is exactly to the liking of the establishment. If that will happen we will have a manifold revolt in this country,” Cruz said at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington.

“You want to beat Donald Trump, you beat Donald Trump with the voters,” he said.

Party leaders worry Trump would not be able to beat Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in the election, but time is running out after he won most of the states that voted in this week’s Super Tuesday.

Senior Republicans also fear Trump’s plans to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and ban Muslims from entering the United States will turn off voters in November and upset U.S. allies.

Others note his past support for liberal policies and question whether he has any agenda other than advancing himself.

“I don’t think he actually carries the conservative mantle. He’s a little too crass for me,” said Michele Minter, a San Diego executive assistant who was attending CPAC.

Trump, a former reality TV star, often plays by his own set of rules. He cancelled plans to speak at CPAC, normally an essential stop for ambitious Republicans, and will instead attend a rally in Kansas.

The real estate magnate, who is drawing support from many blue-collar Republicans concerned about illegal immigration and stagnant wages, has won most Republican nominating contests and leads in many polls for the primary contests still to come.

“I’m not a normal Republican,” he said to huge cheers at a rally in Warren, Michigan.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, the only candidate to ever challenge Trump’s months-long lead in opinion polls, officially ended his White House bid.

“There are a lot of people who love me, they just won’t vote for me,” Carson said in a speech at CPAC, held in National Harbor, Maryland.

RYAN ‘NOT INTERESTED’

A new group called the Committee to Draft Speaker Ryan filed papers with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday, seeking to raise money to push Ryan as a Republican alternative.

Ryan, a budget wonk who was the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2012, is seen by many in the party as a unifier after he took the speaker’s job last year to unite establishment Republican lawmakers and conservative upstarts in the House.

“He is flattered, but not interested,” Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in an email on Friday.

As Trump cements his front-runner status, senior party figures hope to deny him enough delegates to clinch the nomination, which would give them the chance to choose a compromise candidate at their convention in Cleveland.

The last time that happened at a Republican convention was  in 1948 when Thomas Dewey was nominated.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said there was an 85 to 90 percent chance that the party will not face that scenario this year.

Mitt Romney and John McCain, the party’s last two presidential nominees, called on Republicans to halt Trump’s rise by backing whichever candidate was strongest in their state, a form of tactical voting.

Few elected officials are rallying behind the “Dump Trump” banner. The party’s 31 state governors, for example, are not lining up behind an alternative. Only five have endorsed Florida Senator Marco Rubio and one has backed Cruz, in a sharp contrast to previous years when governors overwhelmingly endorsed the party’s eventual nominee.

Rubio has only one state so far and is gearing up for what could be a make-or-break contest in his home state on March 15. Cruz said Saturday he planned to open 10 campaign offices there, in what could be an effort to force the rival senator out of the race.

Trump is expected to extend his lead on Saturday, when a total of 155 delegates are at stake in Kansas, Louisiana, Maine and Kentucky.

Democrats were happy to let Republicans fight amongst themselves. “We can sit back and let them light their own dumpster fire and wait until they’re finished,” said Eddie Vale, spokesman for American Bridge, a Clinton-allied group which collects negative research on Republican candidates.

“They’re giving us so much great video footage that we could run ads between now and November of nothing but Republicans attacking Trump,” Vale told Reuters.

Nationally, Trump has the support of 41 percent of Republican voters, compared to 19 percent who back Cruz and 16 percent who back Rubio, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling data.

(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Emily Stephenson, Eric Beech, and Ginger Gibson; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Bill Trott and Alistair Bell)

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(Reuters) – Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton rolled up a series of wins on Tuesday, as the two presidential front-runners took a step towards capturing their parties’ nominations on the 2016 campaign’s biggest day of state-by-state primary contests.

Trump and Clinton turned their sights on each other after their Super Tuesday wins, with Trump promising to “go after” Clinton and the former secretary of state decrying what she called Trump’s divisive rhetoric.

U.S. networks projected Trump won six and Clinton seven states on Super Tuesday, when 12 states were voting. Trump won Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee and Virginia, while Clinton won Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Trump’s rival Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, won his home state and neighbouring Oklahoma, bolstering his argument he had the best chance to stop the controversial Trump. U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, favourite of the Republican establishment, was projected the winner in Minnesota, his first victory.

Clinton’s rival Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist U.S. senator from Vermont, also won his home state along with Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma and vowed to pursue the battle for the nomination in the 35 states that had yet to vote.

Super Tuesday was the biggest single day of state-by-state contests to select party nominees for the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

Opinion polls heading into the voting had shown Trump leading in most of the 11 Republican contests up for grabs, raising the possibility of a big night that would intensify worries among Republican leaders who fear the billionaire could inflict long-term damage on the party.

“I am a unifier,” Trump told reporters in Palm Beach, Florida, dismissing concerns that his nomination would rip apart the party. “Once we get all this finished, I’m going after one person – Hillary Clinton.”

The networks had yet to project a winner for Republicans in Vermont or Alaska.

Clinton had Trump on her mind in her victory speech, although she never mentioned him by name.

“The stakes in this election have never been higher and the rhetoric we’re hearing on the other side has never been lower,” Clinton, 68, told supporters in Miami. “Trying to divide America between us and them is wrong, and we’re not going to let it work.”

Sanders won his home state of Vermont and Oklahoma, two of five states he was targeting for victory on Tuesday. He lost to Clinton in Massachusetts, another state he was hoping to win.

Sanders thanked cheering supporters in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont, and assailed the Republican front-runner.

‘DONALD TRUMPS OF THE WORLD’

“We are not going to let the Donald Trumps of the world divide us,” said Sanders, 74, adding that he expected to pile up “hundreds” of convention delegates in voting on Tuesday.

Trump, 69, has worried many in the Republican establishment with proposals such as building a wall along the U.S. southern border with Mexico, deporting 11 million illegal immigrants and slapping a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country.

Even as Trump advances, many Republican Party leaders do not support him and worry that he would be easily defeated in November if Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee.

Cruz told supporters at his victory party in Texas that Trump was a “Washington dealmaker, profane and vulgar, who has a lifelong pattern of using government power for personal gain.”

The crossfire between Trump and establishment Republicans threatened to tear the party apart at a time when it will need to generate momentum behind a prospective nominee.

“If Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, it will split the Republican Party and it will basically, I think, split the conservative movement,” Rubio told CBS News.

But while Trump’s campaign has confounded many Republican leaders, the New York real estate developer cites his high poll numbers and big primary wins as proof he is not dividing the party but grown its ranks.

“We have expanded the Republican Party,” he said in Florida.

With his string of victories on Tuesday, Trump extended his lead in convention delegates over Cruz, Rubio, Ohio Governor John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

On the Democratic side, Clinton took advantage of her strong performance with black voters to cruise to big wins in several Southern states, where blacks make up a big bloc of the Democratic electorate.

While some Democrats have begun to question whether Sanders should continue his challenge to Clinton, he said he had no intention of dropping out anytime soon.

“At the end of tonight, 15 states will have voted, 35 states remain,” Sanders said in Vermont. “And let me assure you that we are going to take our fight for economic justice, for social justice, for environmental sanity, for a world of peace to every one of those states.”

(Additional reporting by Amanda Becker, Ginger Gibson, Alana Wise, Luciana Lopez, Jeff Mason, and Megan Cassella in Washington and Emily Stephenson in Houston; Writing by John Whitesides and Steve Holland; Editing by Howard Goller)

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By Jeff Mason and Alana Wise

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz  released tax returns for several years on Saturday in an effort to pressure billionaire front-runner Donald Trump to follow suit.

Rubio, whose financial decisions earlier in his life have come under scrutiny, paid $78,917 (£56,914) in taxes on $335,561 in gross income in 2014, along with his wife, Jeanette.

Cruz paid $389,124 in taxes on $1.2 million income in 2014 along with his wife, Heidi, who is employed by Goldman Sachs and currently on leave from the bank.

Rubio and Cruz, both first-term U.S. senators, trail Trump in national polls and are fighting to stop the political novice from locking up the Republican nomination for the Nov. 8 election after big wins in South Carolina and Nevada.

The real estate developer has said he will not release his returns until a routine audit has been completed.

“If Donald is embarrassed about his tax returns, it’s up to the voters to assess the facts. It’s time to stop delaying and come clean with the American people,” Cruz said in a statement.

Rubio released his last five years of federal returns on Saturday, while Cruz submitted four years.

Rubio said Trump, who has promoted his success as a businessman as one of his key qualifications for the presidency, may not be as wealthy as he suggests.

“I think part of it is he’s not as rich as he says he is,” Rubio said while campaigning in Georgia.

Rubio and his wife have only one debt: the mortgage on their house, the campaign said, seeking to emphasize that the senator had moved past previous financial woes.

Rubio often refers to the nearly $150,000 in student loan debt he incurred by the time he graduated from law school, paid off with proceeds made from his 2012 autobiography.

He also faced questions for struggling for several months in 2008 to pay the mortgage on his $384,000 South Florida home, despite a $300,000 salary from his job at a Miami law firm.

Rubio also drew scrutiny for liquidating a retirement account to cover expenses, such as home repairs and school fees. That was reflected in $68,241 of income as part of his 2014 return.

During his 2010 bid for the U.S. Senate, which followed his stint as a Florida state lawmaker from 2005-2006, Rubio had to defend his use of a Republican Party-issued American Express credit card for more than $7,200 personal expenses, which he later paid back.

Trump has accused Rubio of living beyond his means.

Rubio’s adjusted gross income in 2010 was $183,826 in 2010. It spiked to $929,439 in 2012, when his book “An American Son: A Memoir” was published.

“There is no doubt the Rubio family has come a long way from the days when their largest monthly expense was a check to (student loan provider) Sallie Mae and checks were sent in the mail to pay bills with the hope the payment did not arrive before the next paycheck was deposited into their account,” Rubio’s campaign said.

Cruz’s wealth, with $1.2 million in combined income with his wife in 2014, placed them well above the $423,000 threshold of the top 1 percent of earners in Texas, according to a 2015 Economic Policy Institute report.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Alana Wise; Editing by Leslie Adler and Mary Milliken)

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s political rhetoric is “racist,” and evocative of Adolf Hitler, former Mexican President Felipe Calderon told reporters at an event in Mexico City on Saturday.

“This logic of praising the white supremacy is not just anti-immigration,” Calderon said. “He is acting and speaking out against immigrants that have a different skin colour than he does, it is frankly racist and [he is] exploiting feelings like Hitler did in his time,” Calderon said.

Trump has accused Mexico of sending rapists and drug runners across the U.S. border and has said he will make Mexicans pay for a wall on the border.

Felipe Calderon was president of Mexico from 2006-12.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox, Calderon’s predecessor, also compared Trump to Hitler in an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN.

“He reminds me of Hitler,” Fox told Cooper on Friday.

(Reporting by Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein and Luis Rojas, editing by G Crosse)

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