With polls showing Gov. John Kasich might actually win Ohio Tuesday, he and his team are taking a page from Marco Rubio's flailing campaign: banking on a contested convention. Tim Reid reports:
"The plan is to win Ohio, and some other states, and if that happens, nobody is going to have enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot," said John Weaver, Kasich's chief campaign strategist, who also worked on Republican Senator John McCain's losing presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2008.
Kasich supporters are betting that an Ohio win will give his candidacy its first real momentum, attracting donors and endorsements. From there, he could score more victories in upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Wisconsin, Connecticut and California, states where Kasich polls favorably.
It's a long-shot strategy for sure, just like Rubio's grand convention plan always was and now he's on the ropes. Losing Florida will likely be the final blow for Rubio, whereas an Ohio win for Kasich will give him a campaign jolt of 66 delegates. But c'mon—"some other states" isn't just going to happen. And even if Kasich and Cruz manage to prevent Trump from securing a majority of delegates, Kasich will have to convince convention attendees that he's more electable than Trump or Cruz. While some establishment types might buy into that, Kasich doesn't have a particularly friendly relationship with the very party elites he'll need to coalesce around him.
Here's the current delegate count: Trump has 460, Cruz has 370, Rubio has 163 and Kasich has 63. It will take 1,237 delegates for any of them to secure the nomination outright.