Club for Growth hits Donald Trump in Utah

© Jim Lo Scalzo, European Pressphoto Agency Donald Trump speaks at a town hall at the Tampa Convention Center

Try and try again. 

The anti-tax Club for Growth, which already has spent $7.5 million through its various arms trying to topple Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, is at it again.

The group announced Thursday that it will air a commercial in Utah, attacking Trump's views on health care ahead of the state's nominating contest Tuesday. It's a modest spend — a little more than $200,000 on broadcast stations across the state and some cable stations in Salt Lake City — but the Beehive State is nowhere as expensive as other markets, such as Florida. Trump easily won Florida and its 99 delegates this week, despite heavy spending there by the Club and other anti-Trump forces.

"Our sense is that it's possible that Trump will still be under 1,237 delegates (needed to secure the nomination) when all is said and done," Doug Sachtleben, the Club for Growth's spokesman, told USA TODAY.

The conservative group now views the race as a two-man battle between Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Sachtleben said a contested GOP convention in Cleveland this summer will serve as a "runoff" between the two. (Florida Sen. Marco Rubio dropped out the GOP's White House race week, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich lags far behind in the delegate count.)

Our Principles PAC, a group that has helped lead the effort by deep-pocketed Republicans to stop Trump, has no plans to retreat, its chairwoman Katie Packer said Thursday. Right now, the group is evaluating whether to put advertising dollars into upcoming primary states or adopt a strategy that seeks to sway delegates.

Cruz, a first-term senator who has clashed with many of his party's establishment figures, has begun to gain support from the party elites who dislike Trump even more. Case in point: South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a former GOP presidential candidate, plans to back Cruz, CNN reported Thursday.

Packer said her group's supporters are united behind the effort to stop Trump, even if their favored candidates are no longer in the race. "Even if people dislike some of the other candidates," she said, "they still don't think those candidates would damage the Republican Party for a generation."