Ohio Gov. John Kasich said Sunday morning that he doesn’t have to win states to stay competitive in the presidential nominating contest, and that instead he only has to keep accumulating delegates.
“Winning is accumulating delegates,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “I don’t have to win the state, I have to accumulate delegates and have momentum going in.”
Kasich argued that this strategy is enough to keep his name in the running, even though there’s no mathematical possibility of him winning a majority of delegates at this point. He said smaller wins that get him some delegates would help him continue to introduce himself to voters who have so far ignored him.
“Because I was ignored for so long, there was Coke, Pepsi and Kasich,” he said. “And so you go shopping, and, you know, they’re out there shopping, and the spouse says there’s Coke, there’s Pepsi and there’s Kasich.”
Without being a known brand, Kasich said, voters had been choosing the other candidates.
But he said his best case now is to show that he can beat the Democrats in November.
“To me it’s … to accumulate delegates, and go into that convention as the person standing who can beat Hillary [Clinton],” he said. “We are going to nominate someone who can win in the fall.”
Kasich’s comments come just days before both he and Ted Cruz are expected to lose to Donald Trump in New York on Tuesday.
Kasich also rejected the idea that he won’t be seen as viable just because he was only able to win his home state of Ohio.
“Only a small, incidental state by the way,” Kasich said.
