You may not have actually heard about this before now, but: Ted Cruz spent today working California (his wife Heidi is acting today as a surrogate in New York*). Fundraising rally in Irvine, radio interview with “John and Ken” at KFI-AM this afternoon, another rally in San Diego this evening.  Ted spent the past weekend in the west part of the state, hitting Colorado and Nevada (for a Jewish Republican conference). Whether he swings back east or not tomorrow is… something I do not know.

But what we do know is that Ted Cruz’s campaign organization has been building an organization in California for months – and that his rivals are lagging well behind him at this point. California is winner-take-all both statewide and by Congressional District – it’s also a closed primary (deadline to register and/or change parties in May 23rd). The Congressional District thing is vitally important – like New York, California has a bunch of CDs that are absolutely dominated by Democrats, which means that the few Republicans that are there have a lot more bang for their delegate buck than in other CDs. And, honestly? California looks like a doable pick-up for Ted Cruz anyway.  The polls are largely garbage, sure – but they’ve rarely been garbage in a way that ended up hurting Cruz.

…Organization, folks. Organization.  Organization, and plans. I certainly would not advise the Cruz campaign to spend the rest of the week in California: there is an election in New York next week, and a bunch of Northeast states coming up right after. And while conventional wisdom says that Cruz isn’t supposed to do well in those races conventional wisdom has been taking an absolute beating this cycle anyway.  It is still, however, a good idea for a campaign to be constantly working from now until the convention. Good to see that Ted Cruz is taking that concept to heart.

Moe Lane

*It was probably a mistake for certain candidates and groups to target Heidi Cruz. At least, it seems to have backfired just a bit.