Ted Cruz, haunted by 'New York values' dig, campaigns awkwardly in the Empire State

Ted Cruz, dressed in a tuxedo, presided over a Manhattan crowd of 800 New York conservatives.

He gave it all he had. And in return, attendees at Thursday's New York State Republican Gala casually ignored him for the better part of his 20-minute keynote speech.

Folks got up and left the room.- Clarkstown Supervisor George Hoehmann, describing the crowd during a Ted Cruz speech in New York

"I am thrilled to be here with so many friends, so many patriots, so many lovers of liberty," the Republican presidential candidate began, his voice forced to compete with the clattering of silverware and unrestrained chatter.

Party members at the $1,000-a-seat dinner milled around to other tables, using Cruz's turn at the podium as an occasion to stretch their legs or take selfies with other guests.

The frosty reception surprised George Hoehmann, who was at the gala.

"Folks got up and left the room," recalled the Republican municipal official from the New York City suburb of Clarkstown. "There was one whole table who got up and walked out shortly after he got up to speak."

Cruz couldn't have known months ago that three words he used derisively to disparage Donald Trump back in Iowa "New York values" would come back to haunt him.

Well, Senator Cruz, welcome to New York.

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"There are folks who just won't let that go," said Hoehmann, who supports Ohio Gov. John Kasich for the Republican presidential nomination. "If they got past that remark on 'New York values,' they might find something in Cruz's speech."

In a contest that suddenly matters on the party's primary calendar, Cruz, the evangelical firebrand who has long positioned himself as the only viable alternative to Trump, is having an uneasy time stumping in the Empire State.

Trump leads in polls with a commanding 53.4 per cent ahead of the April 19 vote, according to an average compiled by website RealClearPolitics.com. Kasich stands in second with 22.1 per cent favourability, followed by Cruz at 17.3 per cent.

This may not have mattered so much in previous election cycles, said Columbia University politics professor Ester Fuchs, who reasoned that New York's primary has for the past 30 years been so far along in the nomination battle that its outcomes were inconsequential.

But facing a possible contested Republican convention this time, every one of New York state's 95 delegates is precious.

Rejected by high-schoolers

"New York is considered a blue state, but nobody's taking anything for granted," Fuchs says. "Not in this race."

New York is not a winner-take-all primary, meaning Kasich and Cruz still have a chance to blunt Trump's path to the nomination by taking some delegates if Trump fails to win 50 per cent of the vote in any of the state's 27 congressional districts.

But while Cruz has touted a four-state winning streak, he has had a tough go of it here.

The New York Daily News greeted his arrival in the Big Apple with a front-page headline imploring him to "Take the F U train."

When Team Cruz tried to arrange an appearance at Bronx Lighthouse Charter School last week, students threatened a walkout. Destiny Domeneck, a chirpy and civic-minded junior, co-authored a letter protesting what the high-schoolers called the candidate's "misogynistic, homophobic, and racist" views, prompting the principal to cancel Cruz's stop there.

"It's not that we hate him. We just felt that what he said about illegal immigration, about a woman's body, what he said about the Bronx back in 2014, that it was all offensive," the 16-year-old said, alluding to Cruz's anti-abortion stance and a joke he made comparing Manhattan's relationship with the Bronx to the need for greater security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

'Right-wing bigot'

When Cruz's team hastily moved the meet-and-greet to a Dominican-Chinese restaurant in the Bronx, community organizers with the Hispanic hip-hop duo Rebel Diaz interrupted the gathering.

"Ted Cruz has no business being in the Bronx," protested duo member Rodrigo (RodStarz) Venegas, as his brother and fellow community organizer Gonzalo (G1) Venegas filmed the encounter.

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"This is an immigrant community. We deal with climate change every single day. And he wants to say that it doesn't exist? We are one of the poorest congressional districts in the country, and to receive this right-wing bigot is an insult to the whole community."

Cruz's "New York values" comment was intended as a swipe against Trump, an effort to peg him to liberal elites.

Speaking over a rumbling overhead train outside the sports bar he owns by Yankee Stadium, vice-chairman of the Bronx Republican Party Mike Rendino said the remarks stung.

Rendino, a former New York City firefighter, suffers from lifelong lung problems due to dust exposure from the World Trade Center collapse following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.

New York swipe 'very personal'

"[Cruz] took a shot at New York. That's very personal to me," the Trump supporter said. "To me, Cruz played for the cheap seats when he said that. He was looking for votes in Iowa, and not looking far enough down the road."

Republicans comprise only about six per cent of registered voters in Rendino's borough, according to a 2012 state board of elections report. So Rendino understands how coveted his vote becomes in a congressional district where candidates will be battling for a few hundred ballots on Tuesday for potentially significant delegate gains.

"We matter," he said.

Still, there are Cruz supporters out there in the Bronx.

Lisa Schiffren, a Republican speechwriter from the affluent Riverdale neighbourhood in the borough, has been vocal about her support for Cruz's conservative credentials and his intellect.

"In the Bronx, there appear to be a tiny, tiny handful of Cruz supporters," she said.

"I support Ted Cruz because I'm one of those people who shares the constitutional view the federal government needs to be pruned back as far as possible."

But Cruz's tough views on immigration, with plans to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants and a call to triple the number of border guards, as well as his objection to same-sex marriage, rub socially liberal New Yorkers the wrong way.

"New York City," Schiffren acknowledged, "is not a very Cruz-friendly place."