Cruz and Sanders look to blunt front-runners’ momentum in Wisconsin

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First came the trappers and missionaries of New France, followed by the lumbermen in the employ of the rapacious resource barons of the American East. Then came waves of Scandinavians attracted by croplands and dairy farms, followed by Eastern Europeans lured by manufacturing jobs. Wisconsin – Tuesday's vital political battleground in the struggle for the White House – has always been shaped by outsiders.

And once again it is outsiders, in this case those who portray themselves as political outsiders in this raucous year of political rebellion, who are shaping the Wisconsin story.

For months, Wisconsin has loomed as a critical confrontation in both U.S. political parties, in part because its profile so neatly matches the parties' self-images. The state's contemporary politics tend to nudge Republicans to the right and Democrats to the left, especially in presidential primaries. And that is why Ted Cruz – an outsider with a difference – is riding high going into Tuesday's balloting, and why Bernie Sanders is hoping for another victory against prohibitive favourite Hillary Clinton.

The focus in recent days is Mr. Cruz, born in Alberta but elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican from Texas. His speeches and political manifestos are perhaps the most outré of the remaining presidential contenders; he favours strict construction of the U.S. Constitution, a radical transformation of the country's tax code, the elimination of wide swaths of the Washington bureaucracy.

Mr. Cruz now holds the lead in Wisconsin over another outsider – Donald Trump, the Manhattan billionaire who has the most convention delegates but whose campaign was roiled in recent days by two setbacks: charges of assault by his campaign chief and then a stumble when he suggested women who get abortions should be punished, only to recant his comments hours later.

It is Mr. Trump who has the most at stake here, and it is Mr. Trump who once again is the centre of attention. But this time that attention is hurting him. More than ever, Republican regulars and his rivals have mobilized to slow or sabotage his march to the GOP nomination, and the phrase "Stop Trump" has become a huge rallying cry in the state.

That effort is being stoked by conservative radio in Milwaukee, which has demonized Mr. Trump. With an audience concentrated in the most Republican parts of the state, these radio commentators have criticized him for not being a genuine conservative. "They're having an impact on the Republican vote statewide," says Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll. "The signal coming out of Milwaukee has been negative and it's been consistent."

This comes at a time when Mr. Trump's clumsy handling of the abortion issue raised new questions nationally about his mastery of the issues. "Politicians have figured out how to talk about abortion," says Kristin Kanthak, a political scientist at the University of Pittsburgh. "It's a hard issue, but Trump clearly didn't know how to handle it. That's true about a lot of issues for him."

Creamy custard and political drama

Wisconsin is the Janus of American politics, looking both right and left.

Democrats know the state as a redoubt of progressivism, a creed actually created there a century ago by Republican politician Robert La Follette and reinforced by the state's periodic rebellions against big corporations and its instinctive skepticism of big business. Thus, the competition between Ms. Clinton and Mr. Sanders, the senator from Vermont who describes himself as an adherent of democratic socialism, speaks to part of the soul of the state.

And yet Republicans know that Wisconsin once was an open, sparsely settled territory that repeatedly rejected statehood out of concerns about big government and, in recent years, has emerged as the site of massive state budget cuts, attacks on the liberal university in Madison and assaults on government unions. Thus, Mr. Cruz can take comfort from the Wisconsin tradition of opposition to centralization and Mr. Trump can campaign in an environment where skepticism of government prevails.

The state produced both a sentinel of McCarthyism (named for senator Joseph McCarthy) and a warrior of Zionism (Golda Meir attended both the Fourth Street School and North Division High School in Milwaukee). It claims credit for the musical (jazz artist Woody Herman) and the military (General Douglas MacArthur).

It is, nonetheless, a quiet and gentle place. Its frozen custard is perhaps the creamiest in the Union, its artisan cheeses the smoothest, its pregame tailgate brats the spiciest, and all three are the subjects of legends and lore, stoked by local balladeers and embraced by national connoisseurs. And, once in a great while, Wisconsin produces important political drama.

A blur of retail politics

In the Wisconsin campaign, Mr. Trump has heightened his rhetoric and Ms. Clinton has amplified her criticism of Mr. Sanders on health care. At the same time, Ms. Clinton has continued her pivot toward Mr. Trump, seeking to portray her possible general election opponent as unfit for the White House and unsympathetic to women.

For his part, Mr. Cruz is hoping that Wisconsin will reinforce his argument that his candidacy is the only alternative to Mr. Trump, and, as a result, he has attracted a passel of heavy-hitter endorsements. The big prize, captured Tuesday, was Republican Governor Scott Walker, the architect of the conservative rebellion in the state.

Mr. Walker's remarks in his Cruz endorsement were aimed directly at the heart of the Republican base in the state: "I know that, as a governor, we need a president who understands that our founders intended for the power really to be in the states and in the hands of the people – not concentrated in Washington."

The third remaining GOP presidential candidate, John Kasich, once considered Wisconsin fertile territory for his moderate candidacy. But the Ohio Governor has not been able to move beyond third place.

For Mr. Sanders, Wisconsin represents a reprise of his campaign in New Hampshire, where he won a decisive victory over Ms. Clinton. Much like he did in New Hampshire, he has campaigned in a blur of retail politics throughout the state. In Wisconsin, his focus has been on trade issues, arguing that his rival has supported trade pacts, such as the North American free-trade agreement, that he contends have put American workers at a competitive disadvantage and endangered or eliminated their jobs.

Wisconsin provides both Mr. Cruz and Mr. Sanders the chance to slow down the front-runners' march toward their respective presidential nominations. Amid the custard, the cheese and the brats for which the state is known, these two challengers hope that Wisconsin will provide the nation with food for thought – and perhaps second thoughts.