John Kasich said Wednesday that neither GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump nor Sen. Clinton won with large margins in at least three states, while Trump had victories in Illinois, North Carolina, and took home the GOP’s grand prize of Florida’s 99 delegates.
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The day after Donald Trump won the Republican primary in Florida, the state’s GOP governor called on the party to “accept and respect the will of the voters” and coalesce behind the real estate mogul.
Republicans can either throw their weight behind a candidate who rejects their policy goals or go on trying to stop him in the hope that he falls short of the majority required, enabling them to put forward another candidate at the July convention in Cleveland to formally pick their candidate for the November 8 election.
Trump, who padded his delegate lead in the latest round of voting, predicted he’d amass enough support to snag the nomination outright before the Republican convention – without much difficulty.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio exited the race Tuesday, with 169 delegates. And he served notice that if GOP leaders try to deny him the nomination at a contested convention when he is leading the delegate count, “You’d have riots”.
Without naming names, Trump said some of the same Republican senators who are publicly critical of him have called privately to say they want to “become involved” in his campaign.
Even though he’s still trailing in the delegate count, Sanders believes he can win the nomination.
“If you disenfranchise those people and say, “I’m sorry, you’re 100 votes short”, even though the next one is 500 votes short, I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. We have come a long way in ten months, and the reason that we have done as well as we have, the reason that we have defied all expectations, is that we are doing something very radical in American politics, we are telling the truth”.
While the campaign insists they can get the nomination without a contested convention, they’re nonetheless preparing for one.
“While we are on the right side, we will not be on the winning side”, Rubio said.
The magic number of delegates for Trump is 1,237-that will all but guarantee him the nomination, short of some extraordinary rule change.
“I’m ready for the first woman president”, said Clinton supporter Ashley Wilson Brook in Raleigh. John Kasich stayed alive by winning Ohio. Her win in OH was a particular relief for her campaign, which grew anxious after Sanders pulled off a surprising win last week in another Midwestern industrial state, Michigan.
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Ms Clinton looks though she could take a five-state sweep. That is a tall order for a candidate who has so far been scoring in the mid-to-high 40% range in state contests – though his chances could improve given that several upcoming state primaries are winner-take-all.
