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INDIANAPOLIS, April 27 (UPI) -- Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz on Wednesday named Carly Fiorina as his running mate should he win the GOP nomination, in a bid to shake up a race tilting toward front-runner Donald Trump. Wednesday's announcement comes after weeks of Cruz and Fiorina appearing together at campaign events.
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Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, endorsed Cruz after she dropped out of the race in February and has turned into a top surrogate for the Texan's campaign over the past several weeks.
"After a great deal of consideration and prayer, I have come to the conclusion that if I am nominated to be president of the United States that I will run on a ticket with my vice presidential nominee, Carly Fiorina," Cruz said during a rally in Indianapolis.
Fiorina followed Cruz after campaign staff changed the placard affixed to the podium from one bearing only Cruz's name to one featuring both him and Fiorina.
She highlighted the desperation felt by many in the Republican Party establishment hoping to find a way to halt the insurgent Trump's rapid march toward the nomination.
"Ted could not be more right in what he said: There is a lot at stake, and in fact, this is a fight, this is a fight for the soul of our party and the future of our nation," Fiorina said. "I've had tough fights all my life. Tough fights don't worry me a bit."
Cruz needs desperately to alter the trajectory of the Republican primary after Trump ran up six landslide victories in a row in New York last week, and in five Northeast states that voted Tuesday.
Fiorina may figure to give Cruz a boost in her home state California, which is the final state to vote, on June 5. But first, Cruz must turn around his standing in Indiana, a winner-takes-all state that votes next week. Polls show Trump leading by as much as 8 percentage points over Cruz.
After Tuesday's drubbing, Cruz has been mathematically eliminated from winning the GOP nomination outright during the primary process. Instead, his only hope of stopping Trump is by winning enough of the remaining delegates to deny Trump his own majority, then make a play for the nomination at a brokered convention.
Asked about the possibility of Cruz and Fiorina formally teaming up, Trump panned the idea on Good Morning America. He said Fiorina would not help Cruz because she "failed to resonate with people at all" when she was a candidate.
"If you'll remember, remember we had so many -- we had so many candidates ahead of us on that stage but she had the one good debate. She went up, then she dropped like a rock and never resonated with the people. So, I mean, Carly is not going to do the trick," Trump said. "I like Carly. Nice person but she never resonated. She didn't do well. She went -- she was very low in the polls and by the end she was an insignificant player."
