The pact ignored territory (Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island) where Trump will rack up delegates. In this way, the deal between the two anti-Trump campaigns reflected a persistent Republican Party blind spot: voters living between Boston and Washington.
For all the talk about Trump’s “New York values,” it was not a given, early in the campaign, that he would emerge as the favorite of Acela-corridor Republican voters. Trump’s blend of populist anger and sharp anti-immigrant talk looked like a bad fit for some of the country’s wealthiest and most cosmopolitan states. And many of the region’s most popular Republican politicians seem to detest Trump.
.. The Times reported that Kasich’s camp had originally tried to cut a deal with Cruz’s campaign a month ago, but that the Texan’s advisers had turned down the approach “in part because it would have meant ceding the spotlight in high-profile contests, such as New York, in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states.” In this, Cruz echoed the essential perspective of his party: that these states, where he had no base, were a useful backdrop for campaigning, but not a place to seek Republican votes.