Kasich hopes Ohio will save campaign
Governor offers last stand to slow GOP front-runner
COLUMBUS, Ohio — From one week to the next, the forces arrayed against Donald Trump have repeatedly suggested one state or another would cut down the Republican presidential front-runner. New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, Michigan. He won them all.
Now the effort to stop — or at least slow — Trump’s march to the GOP nomination has narrowed to Florida and Ohio. Only one is close. Polls give Trump, who lives part time in Palm Beach, a sizable lead in Florida, where home-state Sen. Marco Rubio is making a last stand to save his fading candidacy. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is also campaigning hard in the state.
If the Manhattan business mogul is to be denied, it may come down to Ohio and its governor, John Kasich, who is 0-for-24 in contests so far.
One of the biggest questions when Kasich entered the race last summer was whether, as some bluntly put it, he was too big a jerk to be elected president.
For many, especially Ohioans long familiar with the governor, his White House campaign has proved a revelation.
There is all the usual conservative talk of lowering taxes and limiting regulations, shrinking the size of government and sending Washington programs back to the states. But there are also sermonettes on compassion and caring that seem more suited to a selfimprovement seminar.
Kasich spoke movingly last week at a rally here of the nurse who stays past her shift to comfort a grieving family, or neighbors who take a lonely widow to dinner, so she can get her hair done and wear a dress she hasn’t put on in months.
“I believe when we work together, we’re a great beautiful mosaic,” he said. “We need to live a life bigger than ourselves to help heal this world.”
As Ohio’s governor since 2011 he has angered many Republicans for heresies including support for certain tax hikes and expanding the state’s health care programs under the Affordable Care Act.
His prickly persona is well known in Washington and Columbus, the state capital.
Whatever caused the transformation, Kasich’s new up-with-people luminosity offers a stark contrast to the slashing, belittling style of Trump.
Cruz has won the second most contests, but his hardedged conservatism limits his appeal beyond all but the most ideological Republicans, a problem as the race moves to states with a more moderate lean, like Illinois, New Jersey and California.
Kasich hopes to emerge as the establishment favorite. A victory in winnertake-all Ohio, with 66 delegates, would more than double his total.
It takes 1,237 delegates to claim the nomination ahead of this summer’s GOP convention, and the aim of Kasich and others opposing Trump is to wrest the nomination away at a contested convention held, as its happens, in Cleveland.
The Ohio Republican Party has thrown its full weight behind Kasich; the party chairman organized an anti-Trump conference call with reporters when the reality TV star touched down earlier this month for a rally at Columbus airport, drawing a crowd of several thousand.
A political action committee working on Kasich’s behalf is running more than $1 million in TV ads and has set up a network of phone banks, targeting voters as if it were a race for governor or state attorney general.
For all of that, however, the race remains highly competitive, with polls giving Trump a modest lead.
The same roiling mix of anger, frustration and disgust with politics that has powered Trump’s rise elsewhere is very much in evidence in Ohio, especially in Rust Belt communities whose best days are part of a long ago past.
“There are a lot of people who feel disenfranchised and feel like indentured servants to a government that just doesn’t care about them anymore,” said Bob Ney, who represented portions of Appalachian Ohio in Congress for 11 years. He is neutral in the primary.