Sen. Ted Cruz on Wednesday said Ohio Gov. John Kasich is playing the role of “spoiler” in the GOP race and that Mr. Cruz would have beaten Republican front-runner Donald Trump in Illinois had Mr. Kasich not been in the race.
“John Kasich is a good man; he’s an honorable man,” Mr. Cruz said on CNN’s “New Day.” “But he has no path to the nomination. It’s mathematically impossible for John Kasich to become the Republican nominee. He needs more than a 100 percent of the remaining delegates.”
“And it’s worth remembering — Kasich went 0-for-27, lost 27 states in a row,” Mr. Cruz said. “Then he won his home state and then last night he lost again overwhelmingly in both Utah and Arizona.”
“In two weeks, he’s going to lose Wisconsin again, and you can’t lose every state and expect to be the nominee,” he said. “Right now, Kasich’s role is really being a spoiler.”
This week, Mr. Cruz won all 40 delegates in Utah, while Mr. Trump won Arizona to pick up the 58 delegates at stake there. The latest count, according to The Associated Press, has Mr. Trump with 739 delegates, Mr. Cruz with 465 and Mr. Kasich with 143. A candidate needs 1,237 delegates to clinch the party’s nomination.
“What Kasich can do is pull enough votes away to let Trump win with a plurality, and I’ll give you an example,” Mr. Cruz said. “A week ago in Illinois, Donald Trump got 38 percent. … I got 30 percent. Kasich was at 19. If Kasich hadn’t been in the race, we would have beaten Donald Trump in Illinois, and that’s a great example.”
“Listen, I know John doesn’t want to be a spoiler, and at the end of the day, I believe he’s going to put country first, and we’ve got to come together and unite,” he said.
“When you keep losing and losing and losing, what happens in politics, as you know, your money dries up,” Mr. Cruz said. “You can’t keep running a campaign.”
Mr. Kasich, though, has bristled at the “spoiler” tag and has argued that no candidate is going to go into the party’s July convention in Cleveland with enough delegates to clinch the nomination outright.
“Ted Cruz can’t beat Donald Trump head-to-head, but for some reason, Ted Cruz is trying to force John Kasich out so he can hand the nomination to Donald Trump,” said Kasich campaign spokesman Rob Nichols. “We won’t let Ted Cruz give away our party to Trump.”
John Weaver, Mr. Kasich’s chief strategist, sent out a memo Tuesday evening saying that Mr. Kasich is the key to Republicans’ hopes of stopping Mr. Trump.
“Assertions to the contrary are inaccurate,” Mr. Weaver wrote. “They are disingenuous attempts to mislead Republicans and hand the nomination to Donald Trump.”
“John Kasich must continue to fight Donald Trump for delegates in order to prevent Trump’s reaching 1,237, and despite his protestations, Ted Cruz is not going to achieve that magic number, either,” he wrote. “To reach 1,237 delegates, Cruz would have to win more than 80% of remaining available delegates — an impossible task regardless of whether or not John Kasich is in the race.”
Mr. Weaver also pointed to recent polling that showed Mr. Kasich beating Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and said Mr. Kasich is the best candidate to have at the top of the ticket for vulnerable Republican senators up for re-election this year.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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