LAS VEGAS -- Ted Cruz will have hundreds of influential Republican donors and Jewish leaders all to himself this weekend in Las Vegas as he addresses the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Heading into the weekend, Democrats Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton toned down their rhetoric after each accused the other of lacking qualifications to be president. Sanders also announced he is heading overseas next week to attend a Vatican City conference on social, economic and environmental matters.

Cruz's fellow candidates for the GOP presidential nomination, Donald Trump and John Kasich, declined invitations to attend the Republican Jewish Coalition conference.

Trump had no clear scheduling conflict, with no public events this weekend until a Rochester, N.Y., rally Sunday afternoon.

It's a "missed opportunity" for Trump to build on a well-received recent speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said Abbie Friedman, a board member for the Republican Jewish Coalition who introduced Trump when he spoke to the group in December. "With Cruz coming in, he'll have the entire platform to himself to win support from an incredibly powerful and important group."

The Republican Jewish Coalition is funded by the top political donor of 2012, Sheldon Adelson, and meets at the billionaire's Venetian casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

Trump declined an invitation to attend a private dinner at Adelson's home Thursday night with the Republican Jewish Coalition's board, according to people with direct knowledge of the invitation who weren't authorized to share the details about the event. Trump decided not to attend the dinner even before he canceled a West Coast trip that he'd planned for Thursday and Friday.

Trump's spokesman and his campaign manager did not respond to requests for comment.

The Republican front-runner does not appear to be sending surrogates to Las Vegas, either, as onetime presidential candidate Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker did last year.

"That, to me, is a real revelation into the weakness of his campaign," said Ari Fleischer, another coalition board member who has said he would back any GOP nominee in the general election. "There should be someone here on the ground. That's what good campaigns do."

Fleischer was a press secretary for President George W. Bush.

In addition to speaking today to more than 500 attendees, Cruz has a separate, smaller event planned with coalition members. His chief Jewish liaison, Nick Muzin, will be there throughout the conference. And pro-Cruz super political action committees, which can take unlimited contributions, are setting up shop in the Venetian this weekend, ready to land donations.

"There's a lot of interest in hearing from Ted Cruz in light of his win in Wisconsin and the impact that has on reshaping the race," said Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matt Brooks. "It's all coming together at a crucial juncture."

Brooks said some of his organization's members no longer see Trump as the overwhelming front-runner and predict a contested convention this summer.

Among the recent converts to Cruz are Fred and Jay Zeidman of Houston. Both signed on last week as fundraisers for the U.S. senator from Texas, after their work for Jeb Bush, who ended his campaign in February.

Fred Zeidman, a Republican Jewish Coalition board member, said he doesn't agree with Cruz's position about deporting the estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally. "But with the safety and security of Israel being our priority, no one in this whole campaign is more outspoken on this issue than Ted Cruz," he said. "And we'd be remiss if we didn't show him our support."

Charlie Spies, a Republican Jewish attorney, suggested that Cruz has a clear advantage over Trump in many attendees' minds.

"The pro-Israel community believes that Ted Cruz is lock step with them on the issues that they care about involving national security," Spies said Friday in Las Vegas. "The people here will appreciate his showing up. He already has a strong base of support, and I expect that will only grow."

Also Friday, Cruz continued his Colorado winning streak, locking up the support of 21 total delegates to the Republican National Convention, representing a majority of the delegates Colorado will send to Cleveland in July.

Thirteen more delegates will be chosen today at the Colorado Republicans' state convention.

Of Cruz's delegates, only 17 were formally pledged to him, and the other four have the option to change their vote in Cleveland.

The Trump campaign said it wasn't worried and had always expected to fare poorly in Colorado because its assembly process is dominated by party insiders. "If we had a primary, yes, we would have done very well here," said Trump senior adviser Alan Cobb.

Sanders Softens Tone

For the Democrats, Sanders' claim that Clinton isn't qualified to be president was far from the first instance of negative campaigning, and he suggested it won't be the last.

"They're going after us very big-time and in a very negative way," Sanders said Friday in an interview. "And I wanted to make very clear that we will not be a doormat, we will not be attacked without responding. And my point was to focus on the issues where I thought she was lacking."

The U.S. senator from Vermont kicked off his insurgent presidential bid last year with a pledge to focus on issues over character attacks and boasted often that he's never run a negative ad. But for months Sanders has sharply criticized Clinton, slamming her for supporting the war in Iraq, for her record on trade and most aggressively for her lucrative paid speeches before Wall Street bankers.

While his tone has shifted as the race has grown more combative on both sides, Sanders' campaign argues that he has kept his promise. Campaign officials say he has focused his fire on policy and is simply fighting back against Clinton's own attacks.

The conflict between the two flared this week, ahead of the April 19 New York primary. On Wednesday, Clinton questioned Sanders' truthfulness and policy know-how. Sanders seized on the remarks at a rally that night, telling a crowd of thousands that Clinton has been saying that he's "not qualified to be president."

Sanders said in an interview that "by definition, she has a great deal of experience. No one can debate that. But I think in terms of judgment," he said, pointing to her vote to authorize the Iraq war, supporting past trade deals and allowing super PACs to support her campaign. "I think those are judgment calls that call into question whether she should be elected president."

Sanders has since softened his tone. On Friday morning at a Manhattan town-hall meeting broadcast on NBC's Today Show, Sanders said "of course," Clinton was qualified to become president.

"I respect Hillary Clinton, we were colleagues in the Senate, and on her worst day she would be an infinitely better president than either of the Republican candidates," he said.

Clinton had similar words Thursday, giving credit to Sanders as having better credentials for president than those campaigning for the other party.

"I will take Bernie Sanders over Donald Trump or Ted Cruz anytime, so let's keep our eye over what's at stake in this election," she said at a rally in Philadelphia.

Further lowering tensions was Sanders strategist Tad Devine, who said in an interview that the senator would "do everything to make sure that the next president is a Democrat." "Bernie understands that having someone like Trump or Cruz become president of the United States would be destructive to the future of this nation," he added.

"We are glad Senator Sanders reversed himself," Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon wrote in an email. "To call Secretary Clinton unqualified was absurd on its face, but if he persisted in that attack, it would have been dangerous in its potential to spark disunity in the Democratic party."

President Barack Obama said Thursday at the University of Chicago Law School that Clinton and Sanders share the same goals on big issues.

"The cleavages inside the Democratic Party are not comparable to what we're seeing in the Republican Party right now. You know, the argument inside the Democratic party is a little bit more about means, less about ends," Obama said.

Catholic Voters

On his trip to the Vatican on Friday, Sanders will speak at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in a bid to reach a larger audience of Catholic voters four days before the New York primary. Sanders trails Clinton among delegates, and the New York contest is an important step in the senator's ability to gain ground against the former secretary of state.

"The moral imperative that [Pope Francis] is bringing to this discussion is absolutely extraordinary and absolutely what the world needs. These are issues that I have been dealing with for years," Sanders said in a phone interview.

"On economic issues, on issues of poverty and income and wealth inequality, the issues of making sure we address the needs of the poorest people of this planet, this is something that the pope and I are very much on the same page," Sanders said.

It was not clear yet whether Sanders, the first Jewish candidate to win a presidential primary, would meet with the pope during his trip. Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said "if the opportunity arises he would be delighted to meet with the pope," but Sanders has not received an official invitation from the Catholic leader.

Attendees of the conference will include Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, along with Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras, a member of the academy, and Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, an adviser to the United Nations on environmental and sustainability issues.

Archbishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the chancellor of the academy, said he extended an invitation to Sanders because he seems to have a "real interest" in studying the papal documents issued by the pope. He did not issue invitations to the other presidential candidates.

The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences is an an advisory group comparable to a think tank that the pope has appointed to guide him on a wide range of public policy issues.

Information for this article was contributed by Julie Bykowicz, Steve Peoples, Jill Colvin, Catherine Lucey, Ken Thomas, Rachel Zoll, Lisa Lerer and Nicholas Riccardi of The Associated Press and by Sahil Kapur of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 04/09/2016