Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary was another bad night for White House hopeful John Kasich, who still trails Marco Rubio in the overall delegate count more than three weeks after the Florida senator quit the GOP race.
Kasich finished a distant third in Wisconsin, behind Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, and won zero delegates.
{mosads}He has failed to win a single delegate since he won his home state of Ohio on March 15.
That leaves Kasich well behind Trump, with 743 pledged delegates, and Cruz, who has 517 delegates after his win in Wisconsin.
Rubio dropped out on March 15, having lost his home state of Florida to Trump, but still has 171 delegates compared to Kasich’s 143 delegates, according to The Associated Press.
The poor result in Wisconsin leaves Kasich — who has very little cash on hand — with the still more difficult task of convincing skeptical donors and Republican officials to keep funding and supporting what many are viewing as a quixotic campaign.
Even establishment Republicans who say Kasich would be their first choice for the nomination in a perfect world are now saying they would prefer the widely disliked Cruz because they believe the Texas senator is the only candidate who can realistically defeat Trump.
Kasich, whose campaign has argued he could be picked as the GOP nominee at a contested convention, avoided the TV cameras on Tuesday night and did not acknowledge Cruz’s Wisconsin victory on his Twitter feed.
Instead, Kasich issued a stream of tweets highlighting his superior polling to Cruz and Trump in head-to-head contests against Hillary Clinton. Kasich and his allies are arguing that he is the only Republican candidate who can beat the Democratic front-runner in November.
Kasich insists he will pick up more delegates as the calendar turns to more moderate — and presumably more Kasich-friendly — states in the coming weeks. Kasich expects to do well in the New York primary on April 19 and has been targeting Pennsylvania on April 26.
He’s also recruited an experienced team to help twist arms at a contested convention, including veteran GOP strategist Charlie Black, who worked for Ronald Reagan in the contested GOP convention of 1976, and Stu Spencer, who helped Gerald Ford secure the nomination that year.
—Jonathan Easley contributed reporting.