John Kasich is dropping out of the Republican presidential race, he said Wednesday.
Kasich’s decision to suspend his efforts
came after he improbably became the last challenger to Donald Trump,
who emerged as the presumptive GOP nominee Tuesday night when Ted Cruz
dropped out.
“I have always said that the Lord has a
purpose for me as he has for everyone,” Kasich told reporters in
Columbus, Ohio. “And as I suspend my campaign today, I have renewed
faith, deeper faith, that the Lord will show me the way forward, and
fulfill the purpose of my life.”
Even before winning his home state of
Ohio in March, Kasich was facing pressure to get out of the race, with
no clear path to victory. His campaign never became more than a spoiler
run, designed to keep Trump from getting the 1,237 delegates needed to
win the nomination before a contested convention.
But he was not yet ready to quit. Kasich
had fundraisers scheduled in the Washington area Wednesday, and was on a
plane at the Columbus airport when he had a change of heart.
After having the plane taxi back from
the runway, according to one source close to Kasich, he then called four
of his closest friends, and said, “My heart is not in this.” The source
said that his friends then told Kasich that if his heart is not in it,
he ought to do what he needs to do.
Kasich was always a somewhat offbeat
Republican contender, who laughed at himself on the trail, occasionally
took positions more in line with Democrats (like expanding Medicaid in
Ohio) and touted his ability to work across the aisle. He sometimes even
joked that he would have done better in the Democratic primaries than
in the crowded Republican field.
The two-term governor attempted to
distinguish himself from the the raucous GOP field by avoiding direct
attacks and striking a more positive tone. (His affiliated super PAC,
however, was not shy about criticizing opponents for being negative.)
Kasich hugged one supporter at a South Carolina town hall
who shared a deeply personal story of losing his friend to suicide and
comforted another woman at a Virginia town hall as she spoke of her
son’s autism. And Kasich, himself, shared the deeply personal story of
how he found God after losing both his parents in a car crash.
The future has clearly been on the mind
of the candidate: As of Tuesday night, there were clearly very high
level discussions about what he should be doing.
One of his outside advisers said Tuesday
night that he expected Kasich to pull out, but then reversed the story.
A senior campaign official said that Kasich would be staying in the
race despite Cruz’s withdrawal and would challenge Trump to debates.
The official Tuesday night said that
Kasich was staying in because there was “too much to fight for: the soul
of the GOP and the future of America.”
Publicly, Kasich’s campaign also insisted he would stick around.
“Sen. Ted Cruz just dropped out of the
presidential race and it’s up to us to stop Trump and unify our party in
time to defeat Hillary Clinton,” Kasich campaign manager Ben Hansen
said in a fundraising email to supporters Tuesday night.
And Wednesday morning, a senior outside
adviser held a call with donors, with the game plan to continue to the
convention. Another adviser, who was planning to attend a national
security meeting for Kasich, was then told that the meeting was off.
In their effort to stop Trump from
crossing the 1,237 delegate threshold, Kasich and Cruz made an unusual
deal the week before Indiana, agreeing for the Ohio governor to leave
the state to Cruz and for Cruz to vacate Oregon and New Mexico in an
effort to allow both to take on Trump one-on-one in states presumably
favorable to their efforts.
The two also met this past Saturday at
the California GOP convention hotel outside of San Francisco, according
to a Kasich source familiar with the meeting. The meeting came at Cruz’s
request, because Cruz wanted to have friendlier relations between the
two last non-Trump candidates in the race.
The two spoke mostly about the “contours
of the race,” the source said, and agreeing that if Cruz won Indiana
they could work together in California.
Kasich could potentially still end up on
the Republican ticket — he has been floated as a possible pick for vice
president, based in part on his popularity in Ohio, a crucial swing
state
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