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Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, poses for photographs during a campaign stop on Sunday, March 13, 2016, in Columbus, Ohio.(Photo: Matt Rourke, AP)
COLUMBUS, Ohio<span style="color: Red;">*</span>—<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Ted Cruz is attempting to make Ohio's Republican primary a three-person race, sweeping into Columbus on Sunday night insisting he's the only viable alternative to front-runner Donald Trump.
The assertion marked a challenge to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who says he will win Ohio's primary Tuesday and deny Trump the winner-take-all state's 66 delegates, among the GOP nomination fight's richest prizes.
Polls in Ohio have shown Kasich with the best chance of defeating Trump here. The two are deadlocked in recent surveys, with Cruz trailing by as much as 20 percentage points. Those polls are the reason Mitt Romney more than a week ago urged Republican voters seeking to stop Trump to vote for the candidate in each state with the best chance to defeat him — Kasich in Ohio, he said. To that end, Romney plans to campaign with Kasich on Monday, the campaign said Sunday night.
But a CBS News poll released Sunday — at this point, an aberration — showed Cruz within striking distance: with 27% among GOP likely voters to Kasich's and Trump's 33% each.
Cruz cited the poll Sunday, to cheers from more than a thousand people. But Cruz's visit to Ohio was about more than eking out an improbable win and picking up the 66 delegates. The Cruz campaign has long talked of a one-on-one campaign between Cruz and Trump starting Wednesday, the day after primaries in Ohio and Florida.
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Cruz has already sought to ensure a struggling Marco Rubio loses his home state of Florida on Tuesday, campaigning heavily in the state even though Rubio's defeat almost certainly means Trump will win there. Now, with Kasich pulling even with Trump in Ohio, Cruz hopes to take away a few percentage points from the Ohio governor, ensuring he drops out of the race Tuesday — even if that gives Trump, not Cruz, the win in the Buckeye State.
“John Kasich is a good man, a decent and honorable man," Cruz told reporters Sunday before his rally here. Of Kasich and Rubio, he said: "They have no path whatsoever to winning the Republican nomination. That takes 1,237 delegates. It is mathematically impossible for either one of them to win 1,237.
"So if you don’t want to see Donald Trump as the nominee, the only way to beat him<span style="color: Red;">*</span>—<span style="color: Red;">*</span>there is only one candidate who has beaten him over and over and over again, and who will beat him.”
Cruz has won 369 delegates to Trump's 460 delegates. Rubio and Kasich trail with 163 and 63 delegates, respectively. Both campaigns acknowledge their only path to the nomination is to prevent their rivals from winning a majority of the 2,473 Republican delegates ahead of the GOP convention in July in Cleveland. In that case, candidates would be competing to lure delegates into voting them onto the GOP ticket.
Cruz's challenge to Kasich comes two days after Rubio's campaign signed on to one philosophy for stopping Trump: "If you are a Republican primary voter in Ohio and you want to defeat Donald Trump, your best chance in Ohio is John Kasich," Rubio spokesman Alex Conant said on CNN on Friday. Kasich's campaign scoffed and did not return the favor.
Seemingly recognizing the challenge, a dozen Kasich supporters held signs outside Cruz's rally Sunday evening as supporters filed in through the rain.
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"Beat Trump now. Beat Hillary in November," one Kasich volunteer called. "Vote for a uniter, not a divider," another said.
"We're going to see the next president," a Cruz supporter, smiling, called back.
"You're making a mockery of yourself. You're going to get humiliated on Tuesday," another Cruz supporter said, without animosity.
Many in the crowd booed when Cruz suggested they might be considering voting for Kasich or Rubio on Tuesday.
Still, several Cruz supporters told The Cincinnati<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Enquirer they think Kasich has been a good governor, but they find him not quite conservative enough for their liking. Plus, some said, they don't think he has a chance of winning the nomination.
"He's done good things in Ohio, but our big thing is Common Core," said Sandy Bovard, 56, of Commercial Point, Ohio. Kasich has supported the use of the educational standards in Ohio, although he says other states should decide for themselves what standards to adopt. Cruz says he would end Common Core, although many argue the federal government doesn't have the authority to cease the use of a set of standards it has incentivized by tying to federal money but does not control.
Cruz is "not just blowing off things off the top of his head," said Mary Mueller, 61, of Fairfield, Ohio, in a tacit comparison of Cruz to Trump. "He has passion and compassion, and I don't think we've had that for a while. This is our chance to take the country back. I didn't think it would ever come again."
Follow Chrissie Thompson on Twitter:<span style="color: Red;">*</span>@CThompsonENQ
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