Newsletter: Essential Politics: A brawl in New York as a crucial primary draws closer

No one ever said a New York primary would be sedate.

With both Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders feeling intense pressure to win the April 19 primary, tempers have flared, rhetoric has escalated and New York’s tabloid press is having a great time.

Meantime, over on the Republican side, Sen. Ted Cruz is stealing convention delegates from under Donald Trump‘s nose, and the GOP front-runner is only now saying that he’s preparing to mount a serious delegate effort.

Good afternoon, I’m David Lauter, Washington bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in the presidential campaign and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

THE BRAWL IN NEW YORK

The Republican race remains by far the more seriously contested of the two — odds seem about 50-50 that Trump will have won a majority of the convention delegates by the time the California primary ends the balloting on June 7. But it was the Democratic race that generated the most headlines this week.

The news began with an editorial board interview that went bad — Sanders sitting down with editors and writers at the New York Daily News. By the time the session ended, the Vermont senator had flubbed basic questions about how his plan to break up big Wall Street firms would work, damaged his street cred regarding New York’s subways, offended some supporters of Israel by exaggerating the civilian death toll from the last Gaza war and generated new controversy about his stand on gun control.

At New York’s racetracks, that would be a superfecta — four in a row — and it set the tone for a tough week. First, the Daily News served up a front-page headline denouncing “Bernie’s Sandy Hook shame” on gun control, referring to his opposition to a lawsuit filed by families of the victims of the 2012 elementary school massacre in Connecticut.

Then Clinton, in an interview on MSNBC, said Sanders’ inability to explain his bank plan had “raised a lot of serious questions” about what he could accomplish as president.

The next day, Clinton took a mob of reporters with her as she rode the subway. Meantime, some prominent Jewish groups demanded that Sanders publicly retract his remarks about Gaza, with Israel’s former ambassador to the U.S. calling it a “blood libel.” In 2008, Jews made up about 1 in 6 Democratic primary voters in New York.

Sanders, feeling under attack, responded angrily, saying that because of Clinton’s vote on the Iraq War in 2003, her ties to Wall Street and her votes on trade agreements, “I don’t believe that she is qualified” to be president.

As Evan Halper and Chris Megerian wrote, that set off a whole new storm among Democrats, with the White House, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio all criticizing Sanders’ language.

By Friday morning, Sanders had backed down, saying in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show that “of course” Clinton is qualified.

“On her worst day, she will be — she would be — an infinitely better president than either of the Republican candidates,” he said, with, perhaps, a telling slip of verb tenses.

The high-decibel exchanges likely will continue, however. The two candidates are scheduled to face off in a debate next Thursday. We’ll have full, live coverage on Trail Guide, and then on the 19th, you can follow the outcome of New York’s voting as we post live results, speeches and analysis.

And as the race unfolds, keep watch on the delegates in both parties with our Delegate Tracker, which shows where each candidate stands and where each has won support.

A TOUGH WEEK FOR TRUMP

In Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary, Cruz succeeded in winning 36 of the state’s 42 Republican convention delegates. That leaves Trump needing to win about 6 in 10 of the remaining delegates in order to gain a first-ballot majority at the nominating convention in July.

Since Trump likely will lose some of the smaller-state contests in May, he needs to run up the score in New York. Currently, he has a good chance of hitting his marks there.

New York sends 95 delegates to the national convention, the fourth-largest delegation behind California, Texas and Florida. If a candidate wins more than 50% of the statewide vote, he gets all 11 of the state’s at-large delegates. Winning 50% in any congressional district gets a candidate three more. Polls currently show Trump hovering just above the 50% mark statewide, with Ohio Gov. John Kasich in second and Cruz far behind.

But the Texas senator is targeting a handful of congressional districts, including some urban districts that have few Republican voters, hoping to maximize his delegate count.

That same attention to fighting district-by-district and taking advantage of the idiosyncrasies of the rules has put Cruz in good position to challenge Trump if the New York businessman falls short of a majority on the first ballot.

In one state after another, Cruz has managed to get his own loyalists elected as convention delegates, even in states in which they are bound to vote for Trump on the first convention ballot.

As Lisa Mascaro explained, Cruz is working multiple angles as he seeks ways to chip away at Trump’s lead. The latest examples come from Colorado, which holds its statewide GOP convention Saturday. In preliminary district conventions, Cruz has succeeded in getting his candidates elected as delegates.

Trump, meantime, has kept largely quiet since losing Wisconsin. He held one rally on Long Island, but otherwise has been closeted in meetings, canceling a planned event in Rancho Palos Verdes to meet with Paul Manafort, the longtime GOP operative whom he recently hired to manage his strategy for the Republican convention.

Manafort appears to be consolidating control of the campaign at the expense of Trump’s controversial campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.

STORIES OF NOTE

When the Republican candidates arrive in Cleveland in July, they will be armed with technology that was not even dreamed of the last time the GOP had a contested convention, in 1976. As Halper described, a cottage industry has sprung up promising to replace smoke-filled rooms with high-tech apps.

But who will pay for that convention remains unclear. As Joe Tanfani reported, a lot of big-money donors and corporations that helped fund past GOP conventions have been keeping their checkbooks closed this year.

Kurtis Lee took a look at the backgrounds of Trump’s unorthodox collection of foreign policy advisors.

And, as Phil Willon reported, California officials are warning that polling places may be overwhelmed by a tide of voters for the June 7 primary — the first decisive presidential primary that California has hosted since Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern faced off in the state in 1972.

And have you heard the complaints from Sanders supporters about a “Bernie Blackout” in the media? The numbers don’t support the allegation.

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That wraps up this week. My colleague Christina Bellantoni will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in the 2016 campaign with our Trail Guide at our politics page and on Twitter at @latimespolitics.

Send your comments, suggestions and news tips to politics@latimes.com.