WEST CHESTER, Ohio – First he went after “Little Marco” Rubio. Then he targeted “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz.
Now as he faces a key test on Tuesday in Ohio, a state that could ease his way to the Republican nomination or raise a significant hurdle, Donald Trump has turned his sights on its governor, presidential rival John Kasich.
He has yet to use the sort of pithy put-downs he plastered on Rubio or Cruz, though “absentee governor” is an oft-repeated criticism of Kasich, who has been away from Ohio for long stretches of his second term..
Instead, Trump has served up a smorgasbord full of scorn: Kasich is a baby. Kasich is weak. Kasich is a loser. Kasich isn’t very bright. Kasich helped tank the economy as a Lehman Brothers. executive. Kasich voted for lousy trade deals that have punished Ohio’s workers.
“Your coal industry is dead your, your steel industry is dead,” he told an audience Monday night in Youngstown. “Your governor is totally overrated.”
The shift in tone and emphasis, after Trump long ignored Kasich, reflects the reality facing the Republican front-runner on one of the biggest voting days of the nominating season.
Five states will hold primaries Tuesday, including North Carolina, Missouri and Illinois, with 358 delegates at stake. That is more than a quarter of the number needed to claim the GOP nomination.
But the most important voting will be in winner-take-all Florida and here in Ohio, testing Rubio and Kasich where voters know them best. Losses at home would force both to give up the race, leaving just Cruz, who has demonstrated limited appeal, as the last candidate facing Trump.
A sweep of the two states and their combined 165 delegates could all but cinch the nomination for Trump.
Cruz continued to insist he was the stronger of the two in a prospective general election against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. “If we nominate Donald Trump, Hillary wins,” Cruz said at an Illinois stop Monday in heavily Republican DuPage County.
In Florida, Rubio struck a contemplative tone, comparing the tumultuous campaign to a broader shake-up of the country’s values.
“We have a culture today where what used to be wrong is now considered right,” the senator told a crowd at Palm Beach Atlantic University.
He cited Trump’s often-outlandish rhetoric – “we never had a presidential candidate that has to be bleeped out” – but conceded he bore some responsibility for the raunchy tone of the campaign, saying he “felt terrible” for his crass swipes at the front-runner over his tan, his hair and, implicitly, his genitals.
“It embarrassed my children,” he said. “It embarrased my wife.”
Polls suggest that Trump is well ahead in Florida, where he lives part-time in a Palm Beach mansion. But in Ohio, Trump’s lead in surveys has turned to a slight advantage for Kasich as the contest comes into sharper focus and the news since Friday night has been filled with accounts of violence at a Trump rally in Chicago.
In a sign of his concern, Trump canceled an election-eve rally in Florida and added the event Monday night outside Youngstown, a Rust Belt city filled with the white working-class voters who have been among his strongest supporters.
“We’ve got to beat Kasich,” he said. “He’s not going to be a great president.”
Kasich’s reaction to the mayhem in Chicago was to blame Trump. He accused him of fomenting a “toxic environment” that has poisoned the country’s politics and said the images from the near-riot sent an embarrassing message around the world.
“Our enemies are going to take advantage of them,” he said at a Sunday campaign stop outside Cleveland. “Our friends are scratching their heads saying, ‘What the heck is happening in America?’”
The sharper edge represents a shift for Kasich as well, who had positioned himself throughout the Republican contest as the one candidate who refused to stoop to sniping that others engaged in. “I am not going to take the low road to the highest office in land,” he said Monday night, drawing a huge cheer at a hometown rally in Westerville with what remains one of his standard lines.
But the stakes in Ohio are arguably higher for Kasich than Trump. A defeat and subsequent withdrawal from the contest would mark the second time he has run for president and lost and, at age 63, could spell the end of Kasich’s national ambitions.
For all of Trump’s name-calling, there are substantive differences with Kasich.
As a member of Congress, Kasich voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact with Canada and Mexico that removed all tariffs and quotas between the U.S. and the two countries. Trump blames NAFTA for decimating much of the country’s manufacturing base.
“Ohio has never ever come back from that,” Trump said at an appearance Sunday in West Chester, a Cincinnati suburb.
They differ over Common Core, the recommended federal education standards, which Trump has criticized.
One of the most significant areas of disagreement is over immigration, with Kasich opposing Trump’s proposal to round up and deport the estimated 11 million people living in the United States illegally. As president, Kasich said in a debate last week, he would give them an opportunity to stay, though not obtain citizenship.
If America hadn’t welcomed immigrants like his mother, Kasich said, “I’d be running for president of Croatia.”
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