Rubio and Cruz’s high-stakes ground game battle in Nevada

• Andrew Romano and Holly Bailey

  February 21, 2016

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz campaigns Feb. 21 in Pahrump, Nevada (Photo: John Locher/AP)LAS VEGAS — Donald Trump has led the GOP field in every single poll taken in Nevada since he entered the race last June , often by as many as 20 percentage points. And after his resounding victory in South Carolina, the tinsel-haired mogul is the heavy favorite to win yet again when Nevada Republicans come out to caucus on Tuesday.But as recent back-to-back visits to the neighboring Las Vegas headquarters of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz made clear, neither campaign seems particularly concerned about Trump — or any of the other Republican candidates — in the final days of the Silver State contest. They’re far more focused on each other.That’s because both camps believe that with Trump coasting on his celebrity, as usual, they can reshape the results and beat expectations on Caucus Night by quietly, methodically mastering the unglamorous work of getting out the vote. Their thinking is that in a state where the polling is particularly unreliable, the process is particularly chaotic, and the turnout is particularly low, the ground game could have bigger effect than anywhere else.“Oh, you have to see this,” a gray-haired Rubio volunteer with a thick Southern accent told Yahoo News, gesturing toward her laptop. On the screen was a picture of Cruz’s louche, smirking face superimposed on the body of a naked man lounging in a rubber-duck-filled bathtub — a cheeky response, posted online by a Rubio fan, to the Cruz campaign’s poorly photoshopped image of Rubio shaking hands with President Obama.“He has all his ducks in order!” the volunteer chirped. “Isn’t that hilarious?”An hour later at Cruz HQ, which is tucked into somewhat seedy strip mall a few doors down from a shop selling vaporizers and bongs, staffers could barely contain themselves when a reporter mentioned that he had just visited Rubio’s command post in the fancier office complex one block west on Tropicana Avenue.“How many people were there?” snapped Matthew Bell, a field representative for Cruz. “As many as we have here?” Told that the number of Rubio volunteers — about a dozen — matched the number of Cruz volunteers, Bell looked deflated.The mutual obsession makes perfect sense. Early on, Jeb Bush, who suspended his campaign Saturday after a distant fourth place finish in South Carolina, built what was widely considered the best operation here; the consultant who was running his campaign, Ryan Erwin, led Mitt Romney to caucus victories in both 2008 and 2012. As Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison, Rubio’s Nevada campaign chairman, told Yahoo News, “Technically, Bush did everything right.” And yet the latest polls, taken before Bush dropped out, showed him in last place locally, behind even Ben Carson and John Kasich.Carson and Kasich remain in the race, but neither is poised to make much of an impact. Like Bush, Carson was on the ground early, but he’s been losing steam for months, and his last-place showing in the Palmetto State won’t help. And Kasich isn’t even visiting Nevada between now and Caucus Day.That leaves Cruz and Rubio. With Trump appearing to hold a sizable lead — and with the two young senators from Florida and Texas having just finished neck-and-neck in South Carolina — the battle for second place will likely be the marquee event Tuesday night.