Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump each trounced their rivals in the respective Democratic and Republican primaries in Arizona, one of three western states voting on Tuesday.
In other contests, Bernie Sanders handily beat Clinton in caucuses in Utah, and he held a lead in Idaho’s Democratic caucus.
On the Republican side, Cruz led in Utah, and sought to eke out a majority of the vote to win all of the state’s 40 delegates. But Trump was still expected to widen his delegate lead on Tuesday, as his victory in Arizona, a winner-take-all state, allows him to collect all of its 58 delegates.
The ISIS attacks in Brussels overshadowed the primaries and caucuses, and candidates sought to frame their campaign in the context in the context of the war on terror.
Cruz and Trump raised alarms over what they see as political correctness run amok. Cruz on Tuesday called for law enforcement “patrols” of Muslim neighborhoods, seeking to target “radical Islamic terrorists,” while Trump backed that proposal as well as for giving authorities the leeway to do “a lot more than waterboarding” to glean information from terror suspects.
Even though Cruz and Trump were in agreement on terrorism “patrols,” their bitterness was on display Tuesday night over an ad that a SuperPAC ran attacking Trump’s wife Melania with an ad featuring her posing nude and the tagline, “Meet Melania Trump: Your Next First Lady. Or You Could Support Ted Cruz on Tuesday.”
“Lyin’ Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a GQ shoot in his ad,” Trump tweeted. “Be careful. Lying’ Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!”
Cruz responded, “Pic of your wife not from us, Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you’re more of a coward than I thought. #classless”
The ad came from Make America Awesome, an anti-Trump independent expenditure committee and not the Cruz campaign.
On the Democratic side, Sanders’ campaign was hoping that victories in Utah and Idaho would mean a rebound from a disappointing showing last week, when Clinton swept all five primaries including Ohio, Illinois and Missouri.
Clinton weighed in on the terror attacks in an interview with CNN, and her campaign scheduled a speech on counter terrorism at Stanford University on Wednesday.
Sanders’ campaign released a statement in which he said that the attack was a “brutal reminder that the international community must come together to destroy ISIS.” He was appearing on Tuesday night for a rally in San Diego, where he was introduced by Rosario Dawson and his sights set on the June 7 California primary.
In Seattle on Tuesday, Clinton said that the response to the terrorist attacks required leadership that is “strong smart, and above all steady.”
“The last thing we need are leaders who incite more fear,” she said.
Sanders will be in Los Angeles on Wednesday for a rally at the Wiltern Theater. Clinton will be in L.A. on Thursday for a series of fundraisers and an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”
Ted Johnson | © 2016 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC