April 20--REPORTING FROM NEW YORK -- After a rough two weeks, the New York primary offered Donald Trump a badly needed chance Tuesday to reset his presidential campaign and regain the upper hand in the fight for the Republican presidential nomination.
There was little doubt Trump would carry his home state, where the real estate mogul is literally a household name: "Trump," in giant letters and various forms, adorns some of Manhattan's most exclusive addresses.
Live results from the New York primary
Rather, the key question was the size of his victory and whether he would win at least 50% of the statewide vote and a majority in each of New York's 27 congressional districts. Anything short would mean divvying up the state's 95 delegates, the fourth-biggest total any primary or caucus has to offer.
The allocation was more than a matter of vanity or political perceptions. The GOP contest has become a hand-to-hand battle for delegates to the party's July convention in Cleveland, where they will ultimately choose the nominee to carry the party standard into the fall campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.
It takes 1,237 delegates to be assured of the nomination ahead of the GOP gathering, which appears to be Trump's best hope as opponents work strenuously to stop him short and throw the convention open to one or another of his rivals.
Trump entered the day with 756 delegates, followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz with 559 and Ohio Gov. John Kasich with 144.
Trump was blown out by Cruz in the last Republican contest, the April 5 primary in Wisconsin, and has been steadily losing ground to the senator's better-organized campaign ever since, as Republicans choose their national delegates at state- and district-level conventions across the country.
Of the three candidates remaining, Trump is the only one with a realistic chance of winning the nomination on the first ballot in Cleveland.
Trump, complaining the system is rigged, has recently shaken up his campaign, bringing in some of the very Washington insiders he once criticized, in hopes of tapping their delegate-hunting and organizational expertise in the run-up to the convention.
But nothing could do more to quell growing doubts about Trump's viability than seizing a big chunk of New York delegates.
The state was always going to be a difficult one for Cruz, whose religious conservatism was an ill fit for New York's live-and-let-live ethos. He compounded his problems with an attack on Trump and his "New York values," which may have resonated in Iowa and earlier contests but hit with a thud among voters here who took it as a personal slap.
By Monday, Cruz had abandoned the state and was campaigning in Maryland ahead of that state's primary next week.
Kasich represented Trump's main challenger in New York, though he stood no chance of carrying the state.
Rather, his strategy was to pick off scattered delegates in a handful of friendlier congressional districts, including those on either side of Central Park, where the relatively few Republicans in Democratic New York City tend toward greater moderation than the typical member of the GOP.
Kasich, while conservative, has been seen as more centrist than either Trump or Cruz and more measured in his persona as well.
Dee Ann Boyd, 54, who lives in Midtown Manhattan and directs a nonprofit organization, said she voted for Kasich. She considers Trump "dangerous" and decided against Cruz. "I don't think he has the respect of his colleagues," she said.
"I don't think my vote is going to matter today," said Boyd, noting Kasich's unlikely path to the nomination, "but I voted my conscience."
From New York, the campaign heads to a batch of contests next week that includes Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island as well as Maryland. In all, 172 delegates will be chosen along a heavily urban corridor that seems to favor the citified Trump and his front-running campaign.
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