With 19 primary contests in the books and no victories to show for it, John Kasich said he still sees a path to victory through “March Madness.”
“This Week” host George Stephanopoulos told the Ohio governor Sunday that “the numbers don’t lie here.” Kasich can’t win enough delegates to capture the nomination without a convention fight.
In Saturday’s four election contests in Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Maine, Kasich didn’t top third place. Kasich’s best showing was in New Hampshire nearly a month ago, where he was the runner-up.
“We did better than anybody thought we’d do last night,” said a defiant Kasich, adding that he gained some delegates on Saturday. “And we have our game plan.”
“Our game plan was to do well in New Hampshire, which we achieved. We did better than people thought in South Carolina. And we continue to pick up delegates,” Kasich added.
So far Kasich has gathered 35 delegates, leaving him 1,202 short of the number needed to win the Republican nomination. He trails the leader, Donald Trump, by over 300 delegates.
But Kasich said he can still string together some critical victories, alluding to March Madness, the tournament of the best college basketball teams played every spring, which is organized into a single-elimination bracket.
“Now we are closing fast in Michigan. We’re going to have a good result out of Michigan because you see, it’s like March Madness. Now we have now moved to the Midwest. We’ve now moved more to my territory,” Kasich said.
“I will win Ohio. And it’ll be a whole new ballgame and I’ll be able to compete in a lot of these states,” Kasich said.
“And let’s face it,” he added. “There’s some places in the South … we just didn’t compete there really aggressively. We didn’t compete in caucuses last night. We still got delegates. So just hold on, George, you know, look at Mississippi, look at Michigan and then look at Ohio.”
