As we predicted during our preview of Ted Cruz's "big announcement" earlier today, the republican presidential candidate, in hopes of kickstarting his mathematically impossible to win campaign, is set to announce that Carly Fiorina will be his vice presidential nominee if he’s the Republican Party’s pick for president according to Politico.
Fiorina, a former Hewlett-Packard CEO, has been among Cruz’s most loyal and active surrogates since she ended her own 2016 GOP presidential bid after a poor finish in New Hampshire in February. The Cruz campaign deliberated over whether to pick Fiorina for the last two weeks, according to one person familiar with the move. It has polled the potential ticket, examining it for its prospective strengths and weaknesses.
The announcement, which was teased early Wednesday morning and will be made official Wednesday afternoon in Indianapolis, comes the day after Cruz suffered a drubbing at the hands of Donald Trump in five northeastern primaries — losses that mathematically eliminated Cruz from getting the 1,237 delegates he’d need to clinch the GOP nomination.
Cruz’s hopes now rest in a contested convention this summer in Cleveland, where the Texas senator would hope to stop Trump on the first ballot and then win in subsequent rounds of voting thanks to support from the loyal delegates his campaign has assiduously courted.
The hope within the campaign is that Fiorina will help Cruz in California, which will award 172 delegates on June 7. Fiorina is scheduled to give the keynote address at this weekend’s California Republican Party convention, speaking hours after Cruz takes the stage.
Judging by online betting markets such as PredicIt, which has Trump with now record high odds of securing the nomination at 81%, the gamble is doomed to fail.
Watch his announcement live below.