Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Friday predicted there will be a contested Republican convention to decide the party’s presidential nominee and that he doesn’t think any candidate will get to the required 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination outright before Cleveland.
“I don’t think anybody’s going to get that,” Mr. Kasich said. “I’m going to win Ohio.”
Fox News host Sean Hannity, who was questioning Mr. Kasich after the governor addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), asked whether he thinks it will be a brokered convention.
“I do,” Mr. Kasich said.
“I’m the last governor standing, there’s only four of us, and we’re the little engine that can,” he said. “So believe in us.”
“It’s not impossible — I have to win,” he said. “After I win Ohio, I have to win 68 percent of the remaining delegates, Marco’s got to win like 64 [percent], and Ted is somewhere around 59 or 60 [percent]. It’s unlikely.”
SEE ALSO: Reince Priebus at CPAC: Odds of contested GOP convention ‘very small’
“So if nobody goes to the convention with enough delegates, then we’re going to have to meet. … By the way, they told me the convention’s going to be held in Cleveland,” he said. “That’s kind of interesting.”
Mr. Kasich said it has to be done “fairly” and recalled when former President Ronald Reagan tried to challenge former President Gerald Ford in 1976.
“At the end, everybody got together; it worked out,” he said. “As crazy as this year is … [can] you think of anything cooler than a convention where we’re all going to learn about how America works, and our kids at school will learn more about American politics than … the Kardashians?”
“Not that I have anything against the Kardashians, but the fact is, Sean, you have to do it right and you can’t have a bunch of people in smoke-filled rooms who are the establishment, by the way,” Mr. Kasich said. “You and I [have] never been the establishment.”
“My only fear of a convention is that these kind of connected interests [would] dominate,” he said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.