MANCHESTER, N.H. — Marco Rubio had just finished an event, impressing the room with his forward-looking message, and Steve Pena lingered among the crowd pressing the presidential candidate for a selfie.
"If he wins the primary, he'd get my vote. But right now, he's my second choice," said Pena, 56, who grew up in Tampa and now lives in this first-in-the-nation primary state, which votes Tuesday. "I'm a Ted Cruz man."
The attraction makes sense.
Cruz and Rubio are young senators, 45 and 44, Cuban-American, dynamic speakers and expert debaters. Cruz finished first in the Iowa caucuses, Rubio third. And they are competitive in New Hampshire.
But Cruz and Rubio could not be more different in message and tone. Deeper yet, they embody a party battle over the direction of the GOP, which is striving to find a winning formula in the face of changing national demographics.
Cruz, a preacher-like figure whose voice fires with emotion, is summoning a conservative movement around a message of destroying a "Washington cartel" that favors deal-making and compromise. His target audience is almost exclusively white.
Rubio, more persuader than crusader and aspirational in tone, speaks of expanding the party base to young people and those "living paycheck to paycheck."
He straddles the activist wing of the party and the establishment, raising suspicions among Cruz supporters.
"Initially he was a tea party man," Pena said of Rubio, who was elected to the U.S. Senate on the rise of conservative angst. "And then it seemed like right after he got in office, he switched."
"I've seen Cruz stand by himself when the media was against him," Pena went on, "when the Republican establishment was against him, when the Democrats were against him. And he didn't falter on principle. That's why I lean that way."
Renee Turner, 57, a professor at Saint Anselm College, where Rubio spoke Thursday, likes Cruz for similar reasons, saying the GOP has been "spineless" for too long.
"But there are limits," she said. "You have to be able to compromise. Otherwise you're not going to get anything done. America is about compromising. I think we can unite under Marco Rubio."
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Republicans typically coalesce around a mainstream candidate, as happened in 2012 with Mitt Romney, a moderate former governor of Massachusetts who had to run hard right to survive the primary.
Cruz's theory is that a strong conservative can win with the right message and funding. "Once it gets down to a head-to-head contest between a conservative and a moderate, I think the conservative wins," he said in November, placing Rubio in the "moderate lane."
His campaign expects more white evangelical and working-class voters will show up while Democrats will attract fewer black and Hispanics voters who were crucial to Barack Obama's wins in 2008 and 2012.
Cruz has proved formidable, raising $90 million through his campaign and an array of outside groups, second only to Jeb Bush on the Republican side. Cruz has drawn enthusiastic crowds, too, even in New Hampshire, where his religious overtones don't play as well and where he isn't expecting victory.
Rubio is closing in as the mainstream favorite — though in a nod to the energy Cruz has tapped into, he stresses he's not "establishment." The momentum means Rubio is drawing more money from big donors as Bush struggles. A strong finish in New Hampshire would make him the party favorite.
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The Rubio-Cruz showdown has been building for years.
Rubio kept a distance from the tea party after being elected to the Senate. Cruz, elected in 2012 without Rubio's endorsement, embraced his role as an agitator, making enemies with party leaders such as Mitch McConnell and John McCain. He is roundly despised in Washington, giving him credibility with activists. Rubio by contrast is liked by colleagues on both sides of the aisle. He talks of working with Democrats on education and other issues.
Cruz is best known for his fight against the Affordable Care Act that led to a government shutdown in October 2013. (During a marathon filibuster on the Senate floor he read Green Eggs and Ham to his children.) As the effort gained attention among grass roots conservatives and the news media, several Republicans joined him, including Rubio.
But the party's image suffered, solidifying the distaste for Cruz. Outside Washington, it made him a star, someone who had the guts to take a stand.
"There are some number of conservatives who think the problem with Republicans is they haven't been hard-edged enough, that they haven't been sufficiently anti-immigrant, that they haven't done enough to shut down the government, that they haven't attacked the New Deal and Great Society enough, that if you ratchet up aggression and the confrontation and the rhetoric, that will inspire lots of dormant voters," said Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who served in the past three Republican administrations. "That leads to tactics that are confrontational and a kind of rhetorical zeal that Cruz has."
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Cruz showed up at a restaurant in Goffstown on Wednesday and compared himself to Ronald Reagan, who won the 1980 primary here after losing Iowa to establishment favorite George H.W. Bush. Reagan, Cruz said, was "despised" by Washington insiders. Cruz talked of reviving a coalition of conservatives, evangelicals, libertarians and "Reagan Democrats."
"We're at a fork in the road where we determine what direction our country goes," Cruz said. "And the people in New Hampshire likewise are in a position to make a judgment, to make a decision which road are we going to go on."
Cruz has focused on Rubio's greatest liability among conservatives, his work on the 2013 immigration bill, suggesting he's untrustworthy, someone willing to compromise. During a rally in Iowa the night before the caucuses, Cruz brought on stage talk radio host Steve Deace, who said Rubio had personally called to urge him to support the bill, which Deace blasted as "amnesty."
"Being conservative is not about going to the middle," said Bill Sanford, 54, who showed up to see Cruz in Goffstown. "Rubio has talked a good game, but he hasn't followed through. I don't want Cruz to be a yes man. Rubio doesn't have a track record for all Ted's done."
Rubio has scrambled away from his role in the bipartisan Gang of Eight and keeps telling audiences he does not support amnesty, or much of anything on immigration reform until the borders are secure.
Still, his work on the issue and his Hispanic heritage hold strong appeal among mainstream Republicans, who are convinced the party has to reach out to minorities in order to survive long term as the share of white voters declines. Romney's 2012 loss led to calls for a more inclusive tone and policies, and Rubio eagerly stepped into the spotlight. A Time cover hailed him as "The Republican Savior."
Immigration aside, Rubio's voting record is decidedly conservative, but his message is one of unity and getting things done, not burning down Washington.
When Rubio talks of abolishing the Department of Education he does so less stridently than Cruz, who also rails against the IRS and Energy and Commerce departments.
"Rubio has a fair share of the conservative vote in his camp but these are conservatives who aren't willing to fully let go of the security that comes with the establishment," said Patrick Davis, a national GOP consultant who is not affiliated with a presidential candidate.
Davis said the speeches Cruz and Rubio gave on caucus night are illustrative.
"Cruz's was littered with references to Reagan Democrats and the old Republican coalition that doesn't exist anymore. Rubio's was littered with visions of a new America, the new generation. There is a distinct difference in the vision for the party and the country."
Cruz's approach will be tested in New Hampshire, where evangelical voters are far less a presence than in Iowa. Polls released in recent days showed Cruz being eclipsed by Rubio for second behind Donald Trump.
"Eventually he's going to run out of conservative voters who want to blow up the building," said Davis. "Rubio is very comfortable swimming with voters who want to get things done but have conservative mores."
Cruz is already looking to resume the battle in South Carolina, which holds its primary Feb. 20.
Contact Alex Leary at aleary@tampabay.com. Follow @learyreports.