We didn't necessarily just fall off the turnip truck. We've been going to conventions for 40 years.

Sen. Ted Cruz will hold two rallies in California on Monday, his first public appearances in the state since it became clear that its June 7 primary is crucial in the Texas senator’s effort to win the GOP presidential nomination.

Cruz has been organizing in California since last summer, and was in the state last week fundraising and taping a late-night television appearance.

But his public appearances on Monday, in the midst of the New York primary and just shy of two months before the California primary, underscore the long odds he faces in the Empire State and the importance of California in his effort to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump.

The presidential candidates are brawling in New York in the lead up to that state’s upcoming primary, but their campaigns are already looking ahead to California’s contest on June 7.

Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’ teams have made inquiries to Los Angeles television stations about the availability of advertising airtime, according to Sheri Sadler Wolf, a veteran Democratic media consultant.

Trump has formally requested availability for airtime starting April 25, a step that typically occurs a few days before an actual purchase of airtime. Sanders has informally asked about certain programs, but isn't as far along in the process, Sadler said.

Lindsey Horvath has a message for Donald Trump, and it’s not welcoming him to her city.

Horvath, mayor of the liberal city of West Hollywood, is adding her voice to those of many other city leaders across the country to say she is fed up with Trump’s campaign tactics and inflammatory rhetoric. As the primary campaign heads to California for its June 7 contest, the mayor let the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign know, and also urged other city and county lawmakers to do the same.

“Where other cities or other communities might roll out the carpet, we’re rolling up the carpet,” she told the Los Angeles Times in a recent interview. 

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, a supporter of Hillary Clinton, said Bernie Sanders was "crossing a line" by saying she wasn't qualified to be president.  

“I think everyone better take a deep breath and be reminded that this is about November," Malloy said in an interview. “Let’s cut this stuff out, and let’s get down to real issues.”

Clinton had questioned Sanders' readiness for the Oval Office in an interview on Wednesday, but had stopped short of saying the Vermont senator wasn't qualified. Later that day, Sanders gave a list of reasons why he thought Clinton was unqualified and said he was responding to an attack by her.

The turbulent Republican presidential nominating contest is beginning to show signs of down-ballot strain, according to a Senate race update released Thursday by the University of Virginia.

Professor Larry Sabato and his team at the Center for Politics shifted six Senate races to tougher rankings for Republicans as the party fights to maintain majority control of the chamber.

"This does not mean Democrats will actually win all six," the authors cautioned in the report. But they added: "There is a clear, if premature, trend here."

As the Democratic primary campaign has taken a nasty turn, President Obama Thursday warned his party against putting ideological purity ahead of achieving progress.

Taking questions from law students in Chicago at an event to pressure Republicans to act on his Supreme Court nomination, Obama said he was not concerned that Democrats were heading toward the kind of intra-party warfare that has dominated the GOP recently.

But he did say the party needed to guard against the kind of thinking that led the GOP to this point.

In a feisty exchange with protesters on Thursday, former President Bill Clinton defended his wife's past comments about "super-predators," which were viewed by some as racist toward black teens.

"I don't know how you would describe the gang leaders who got 13-year-olds hopped up on crack and sent them out in the streets to murder other African American children," he shouted at protesters while campaigning in Philadelphia on behalf of Hillary Clinton. 

As first lady, Hillary Clinton made the "super-predator" comment in 1996 when talking about high crime rates and violence. The comment came on the heels of a 1994 crime bill, backed by the Clinton administration, which created tougher sentencing measures that in turn resulted in long periods of incarceration for black men.