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GOP Presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich addresses the crowd during the pancake breakfast of the Northeast Hamilton County Republican Club, Saturday, March 12, 2016, at the Sharonville Convention Center in Sharonville. (Photo: The Enquirer/Kareem Elgazzar)
Ted Cruz and Donald Trump have piled on John Kasich in an increasingly bitter effort to push him out of the Republican presidential race, drawing unusually harsh responses from Kasich and his allies.
Wisconsin, whose voters hit the polls Tuesday, became ground zero for the anti-Kasich front. Cruz and his allies have launched commercials and sent mailers attacking Kasich.
At two stops in Wisconsin Sunday, Trump said Kasich should be required to drop out because he has won only his home state. “If I didn’t have Kasich (in the race), I automatically win,” Trump said.
USA TODAY
Republicans see Wisconsin as anti-Trump turning point
Kasich’s PAC responded by running a<span style="color: Red;">*</span>viral commercial using Trump’s “Lyin’ Ted” moniker for Cruz, showing the Texas senator’s nose growing and wrapping around his neck. While Kasich and an adviser spoke out against the ad, the Ohio governor Monday called Cruz a “smear artist“ —<span style="color: Red;">*</span>arguably the harshest language Kasich has used against an opponent this election. And when Trump called for him to drop out, Kasich mocked the front-runner as a whiner, saying: “I thought we got out of the sandbox years ago.”
Most polls<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in Wisconsin show Cruz leading with about 40%, followed by Trump at about 35%<span style="color: Red;">*</span>and Kasich at about 20%. The Ohio governor’s campaign had talked of blue-collar Midwestern states such as Wisconsin as places where Kasich could shine, but last week<span style="color: Red;">*</span>pulled back some of its ad spending<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in the state to save it for more promising contests in late April. Still, he campaigned in a couple of Wisconsin congressional districts, hoping to win some of the delegates allocated to the winner of those regions, before heading to New York, which holds the next primary.
The bitter battle for Wisconsin comes as the GOP race is hurtling toward a contested convention, in which none of the three remaining candidates would secure a majority of delegates before the nominating convention in July in Cleveland. That increased likelihood has heightened the urgency for Trump and Cruz to get Kasich out of the race.
Trump has a possibility of wrapping up the nomination outright and says he views Kasich as someone taking delegates he might be able to win. His road to the nomination will get steeper if, as polls indicate, he loses Wisconsin to Cruz.
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Front-runner Trump says Ohio governor John Kasich, who's only won his home state among the many nominating contests so far, shouldn't be allowed to keep accumulating delegates if he has no chance. (April 3) AP
Even with a Wisconsin win, Cruz appears unable to win the nomination before the convention. But he has hundreds more delegates than Kasich and says the governor is taking votes he could otherwise win to force a close contest with Trump. For instance, in two upcoming contests —<span style="color: Red;">*</span>New York and Pennsylvania —<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Kasich and Cruz are tied in polling, behind Trump.
Kasich’s advisers say Cruz couldn’t win those votes in more moderate East Coast states, so they’re not diluting his potential delegate total. The governor will gain ground on the Texas senator when the primary election visits the East in late April, Kasich’s advisers say, muddying Cruz’s second-place status heading into the convention. And in any case, they say, Kasich must stay in the race: He polls the best against Hillary Clinton and therefore must remain an option for GOP delegates casting the final vote in Cleveland.
USA TODAY
Why John Kasich hasn't gathered more support
“Trump/Cruz are now teaming up to try to bully Gov. John Kasich into leaving the race,” Kasich strategist John Weaver wrote Monday in a fundraising email. “Talk about a validator for what you and I know to be true —<span style="color: Red;">*</span>these guys are terrified to face Gov. John Kasich at a convention because they know that delegates will select the candidate who is not only the most prepared to be President, but can also defeat Hillary Clinton: John Kasich.”
The sharp attacks from not just Cruz’s PAC, but the candidate’s campaign itself point to Cruz’s view of Kasich as a threat to take some delegates in Wisconsin. Leading up to the Wisconsin primary, Cruz gained support as the Trump alternative from several leading establishment Republicans, such as Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, but Kasich declined to step aside.
The Texas senator’s campaign then lashed out with a<span style="color: Red;">*</span>commercial<span style="color: Red;">*</span>calling into question the state tax incentives received by a company owned by a longtime Kasich supporter. The company has received job-creation tax credits in the past, but<span style="color: Red;">*</span>has been cleared<span style="color: Red;">*</span>of ethics complaints related to the situation.
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Meanwhile, Cruz’s political action committee hit Kasich with ads saying he is President Barack Obama’s “BFF”<span style="color: Red;">*</span>for expanding Medicaid under the president’s health care law, accusing him of blocking Cruz’s “grass-roots” momentum and inaccurately floating<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Democratic billionaire donor George Soros as a Kasich donor.
Kasich said he won’t get “desperate” like Trump and Cruz to win the GOP nomination. But the attacks launched in Wisconsin inaugurated a new stage of the campaign for the governor, who generally has declined to criticize his opponents. Last week, Kasich said Trump was “not prepared to be president,” as the billionaire front-runner bounced from flaps about punishing women who have abortions to declining to rule out the use of nuclear weapons in Europe. He criticized Cruz for having “no record.”
Kasich has long spoken of seeking to maintain the more positive tone he has cultivated as a presidential candidate, rather than reverting to the combative streak that has shown at times as governor. But as the GOP commotion grew, with news bouncing from talk of candidates’<span style="color: Red;">*</span>wives’ appearance to tabloid allegations of infidelity, Kasich’s team discussed his taking a sharper tone, adviser Tom Ingram said.
“The more Cruz and Trump play like playground bullies and the more attention Kasich gets, the more opportunity we’ve got,” Ingram said. “He’s gotten where he’s gotten by being the respectful, respectable adult in the room. (In Congress and as governor), he was passionate and he was persistent, and those are the characteristics it may be time to see on the campaign trail.”
Contributing:<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, The (Westchester County, N.Y.)<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Journal News and The Associated Press. Follow Chrissie Thompson<span style="color: Red;">*</span>on Twitter:<span style="color: Red;">*</span>@CThompsonENQ
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