A top spokesman for Marco Rubio urged the Florida senator’s supporters in Ohio to vote for John Kasich in their state’s upcoming primary.
In an appearance on CNN, Alex Conant, the communications director for Rubio, said “If you are a Republican primary voter in Ohio and you want to defeat Donald Trump, your best chance in Ohio is John Kasich.” Ohio has a winner-take-all primary and polls in the state show Kasich and Trump neck and neck while Rubio is mired in the single digits.
The Kasich campaign, though, was not willing to return the favor. A campaign spokesman told the Associated Press, “We were going to win in Ohio without his help, just as he’s going to lose in Florida without ours.”
The outright plea for tactical voting is deeply unusual in American politics and speaks to the desperation of those opposed to Donald Trump to deny him the 1,237 delegates needed to obtain the Republican nomination. Many in the GOP are now actively hoping for a contested convention as their last best chance to prevent Trump being the Republican standard bearer in November.
However, addressing reporters at a press conference in a Florida synagogue, Rubio declined to explicitly say that Ohio voters should cast their ballots for Kasich.
When asked about his spokesman’s comments, Rubio said: “If an Ohio voter is motivated by stopping Donald Trump and comes to the conclusion John Kasich is the only one who can beat him there, then I expect that’s the decision they’ll make.”
“Clearly John Kasich has a better chance of winning Ohio than I do, and if a voter concludes that voting for John Kasich gives them the best chance of stopping Donald Trump there, I anticipate that’s what they’ll do.”
The senator, who said he had not spoken with Kasich on the subject, added that he was the only contender who could defeat Trump in Florida and reiterated the message he has taken to voters in recent days who may be weighing an alternative.
“I’m telling people in Florida the truth: a vote for Ted Cruz or a vote for John Kasich in Florida is a vote for Donald Trump,” he said. “If you want to stop Donald Trump in Florida, any vote but a vote for me is a vote for Donald Trump.”
Rubio has staked his entire presidential campaign on his ability to win his home state’s winner-take-all primary. Currently, he trails Trump in polls of the Sunshine State by double-digit margins.
Pressed again later on whether he was urging Ohioans to vote for Kasich or simply anticipating that they would, Rubio again demurred.
“I’ll leave it to John to make that argument,” he said. “I suspect that a voter in Ohio that doesn’t want Donald Trump to win Ohio may very well conclude that the best way to stop him in Ohio is to vote for John Kasich and I respect that.”
Chris Schrimpf, a spokesman for the Kasich campaign, said his camp agreed with the Rubio’s, “that the best chance to beat Donald Trump in Ohio is by voting for John Kasich, and in that spirit, Senator Rubio should immediately tell his Super Pac to stop attacking the governor.”
