BEREA: Gov. John Kasich’s victory speech Tuesday at Baldwin Wallace University had all the trappings of a national convention.
There were libations, a brass band, patriotic squares of translucent paper fluttering in the air and an oversized big screen reading “As goes Ohio, so goes the nation.”
“This is all I got,” Kasich said, holding open his suit jacket to show a man who has campaigned hard to win his first presidential primary contest.
“All I can say is thank you,” he went on, his family standing behind him on a stage in a university town outside Cleveland, which will host the Republican National Convention in July.
“But I want to tell you something,” said Kasich, who had promised to drop out of the race if he had lost Ohio but instead said he’ll take the campaign to Pennsylvania next, “we are going all the way to Cleveland …”
As the crowd of a few hundred supporters drowned out his voice with chants of “Kasich,” it took two Bernie Sanders fans — there for the fun of it — to put the Ohio victory in perspective.
“He’s only won one,” said Travis Cvanciger, 22, a history major at Baldwin Wallace.
“I wish he’d win more,” said Corri Mullen, another Sanders fan who, like Kasich’s true supporters, was pulling for Ohio’s governor to beat Donald Trump.
Kasich’s win in Ohio, his first in a presidential primary season now more than half over, was lauded by Republican leaders as a turning point in an election that has damaged the party’s image.
“You can all say that you were there when the Republican Party chose its nominee, who went on to become the next president of the United States,” Ohio Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor said after early results indicated Kasich was ahead.
“The spotlight tonight begins to move toward John Kasich,” said Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, who noted Kasich’s uniqueness as the only governor left with experience in balancing the federal budget.
But beneath the jazz music, jubilation and chants of “OH-IO” was a recognition of Kasich’s last-place position in what has become a three-way Republican race. Sen. Marco Rubio dropped out after losing his home state of Florida to Trump, who claimed the majority of the five states up for grabs Tuesday, increasing his delegate lead over Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
Moderation prevails
Kasich took Ohio with common-sense posturing in a Republican primary where candidates have raced each other to the right on immigration, national security and other red-meat issues.
He repeated that message Tuesday, again promising not to “take the low road to the highest office,” to remain true to his small-town roots and to ask Americans to work a little bit harder.
Many voters had hoped Kasich would win but aren’t as quick to consider Tuesday as the day Trump began to lose.
“I’m voting for Kasich even though he may not have a chance. I just want to beat Trump, frankly,” said Beth Loresch, who voted in Stow after getting off work at a church in Tallmadge.
In recent campaign stops, Ohio’s governor has doubled down on a distinction between himself and the toxic rhetoric overheard at boisterous Donald Trump rallies (on display at Baldwin Wallace as a single protester chanted the billionaire’s name while being delicately escorted out.)
Kasich kept his cool.
“For those of us who grew up in the 1970s, you can appreciate a good protest every once in awhile,” he said with a smirk.
After voting Tuesday morning in Westerville, Kasich told reporters that not going negative likely cost him opportunities to grab media attention. But he insisted that his campaign’s positive message will become a beacon of hope as all eyes turn toward a nation preparing to pick the next leader of the free world.
Trouble in Cleveland
Kasich has campaigned hard, almost exclusively, in moderate states like New Hampshire, Michigan and Ohio, a crucial swing state.
Over the past five days, Kasich’s tour bus traveled across central and northern Ohio, stopping at a manufacturing plant in Youngstown, an aircraft hangar in Green and a recreation center in Strongsville, among other places.
His last stop Tuesday night brought him back to Baldwin Wallace, where many in the nation got their first glimpse of Ohio’s governor during the first Republican debate in August.
But his win Tuesday may spell chaos at the Republican convention in Cleveland as delegates must sort out the party’s nominee for president.
Trump not taking Ohio gives the Republican Party hope that, in the first ballots cast for the party’s nomination, delegates can avoid a majority vote for Trump and, in subsequent ballots, shift support to a candidate who plays more nicely with the party. With 28 of the states settled, Trump has earned half of the delegates awarded so far. But with many of the future primaries, being winner-take-all, as was the case in Ohio and Florida, Trump has the opportunity to take the lion’s share of what’s left.
The crowd on hand Tuesday shared concerns about Trump and the possibility of a fractured Republican Party, forced to pick a candidate not selected by a majority of voters.
“I feel that, unfortunately, we all laughed when Trump said he would run,” said Mercedez Hathcock, who has volunteered for previous Republican presidential campaigns and brought her 18-year-old daughter, Sara, a senior at Olmsted Falls High School, to the Kasich rally.
Hathcock isn’t laughing about Trump anymore. “It’s important that we stop this,” she said, “It does really feel like the Republican Party is in a crisis. I have never seen anything like this.”
Stopping Trump, Hathcock is proud to say, may have started with the first vote of her daughter’s life.
“I just know that he’s not Trump and he’s from Ohio,” Sara said of her support for Ohio’s governor.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com.