PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump campaigned Sunday before another round of pivotal presidential primaries as their party leaders faced new questions about internal divisions that could complicate their nominees’ general election chances.
With less than 48 hours before voting begins across five Northeastern states, Republican front-runner Donald Trump looked to Tuesday’s contests, where he’s poised to do well, and to a foreign policy speech later in the week. Republican challenger Ted Cruz, meanwhile, abandoned the Tuesday states and instead campaigned in Indiana, which votes May 3.
On the Democratic side, underdog Bernie Sanders rallied thousands of voters in two New England states, seeking momentum even as he offered mixed signals on how hard he would push his differences with Clinton.
Clinton hoped Tuesday’s contests in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland and Delaware would mark a turning point in her quest for the Democratic nomination. Victories in four or five states would all but cripple Sanders’ White House bid.
The former secretary of state went to two Philadelphia church services attended largely by African-Americans ahead of the primary in Pennsylvania, Tuesday’s top delegate prize. She declined to attack her Democratic rival by name in the morning appearance and a subsequent stop in Bridgeport, Connecticut, focusing on the Republican candidates.
Clinton, emerging stronger after a triumph in last week’s New York primary, stood to effectively lock up the nomination on Tuesday.
With 172 delegates at stake Tuesday on the Republican side, Trump could take a significant step toward his party’s delegate majority with the dominant performance that many polls predict.
Speaking to several thousand people in an airplane hangar in Hagerstown, Maryland, Trump stressed repeatedly that he expects to win the 1,237 delegates needed to stave off a contested convention in the first round of voting.
“I only care about the first. We’re not going for the second and third and fourth and fifth,” said Trump.
His rivals, Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, have been mathematically eliminated from earning the necessary 1,237 delegates and are instead trying to block Trump from the majority to force a contested national convention in July.
Meanwhile, both parties acknowledge deep intra-party divisions as the general election season approaches.
“It’s pretty split,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said of his party, noting that he’s aware that some Republicans are calling for a third-party bid to challenge Trump in the general election.
While Priebus said such a challenge was “a nothing burger,” any third-party bid or write-in campaign could doom Republicans in November.
Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz downplayed tensions between Sanders and Clinton, whose rivalry has become increasingly nasty in recent weeks.
“Regardless of the intensity of what’s played out here … we are going to be unified,” she declared.
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