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Super Tuesday has makings of super outcome for Trump; Kasich banking on March 15
On the side
I will be in Cleveland starting Monday for gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption trial. Assuming it isn’t delayed, my time will be consumed by the trial. That means it’s an almost certainty I won’t be able to write columns while the trial is ongoing. The trial is estimated to last at least four weeks and could easily be longer than that.
Meanwhile, it looks like ex-state Rep. Ronald V. Gerberry, an Austintown Democrat, is slowly writing checks. In an article last month, Gerberry told me: “It takes time to write a check” when I asked why he’d only given $3,180 to charitable organizations from his $46,469 campaign fund as of Dec. 31.
When he was convicted Aug. 21, 2015, of unlawful compensation of a public official, he said he would give what was left from his fund to charities. He later told me that he wanted to get his 500 hours of community service out of the day before he could concentrate on writing checks.
The Boardman Board of Education on Monday received a $1,000 check from Gerberry’s campaign fund to be divided between the high school’s science club and quiz bowl team.
Perhaps Donald Trump’s expected strong showing Tuesday will slap some reality into the faces of the party’s establishment that the loudmouth real-estate billionaire is going to be the GOP presidential nominee.
Trump can essentially end this race by coming close to running the table on Super Tuesday, called that because 14 states are holding Republican primaries and caucuses.
The only Super Tuesday states where Trump isn’t the clear frontrunner are Arkansas and Texas.
The latter is represented by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who is running second nationally in most polls but with a campaign on life support. Polls aren’t available, or important, in some of the tiny states, but national ratings have Trump well ahead of the four other remaining candidates.
If Trump can keep it close – or win – in Texas, the race is done.
Cruz struggling in his home state indicates the right-wing conservative is not going to be able to compete with Trump.
Cruz may stay in the race even with a loss in Texas, but he’d be running on empty.
Ben Carson, who at one time was competing with Trump for first, has dropped so far in the polls that he’s a nonfactor in the race.
That leaves Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is in a distant fourth in national polls, and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who is in third with about half the support of Trump.
Both want the other to get out of the race so a politically established candidate can theoretically take on Trump one-on-one and have a chance to beat him.
While Rubio is ahead of Kasich in national polls, the Florida senator has underperformed in the four Republican state races to date.
Kasich focused months of his energy and money on New Hampshire, where he finished in second place behind Trump. But that second-place finish has done nothing to help his standing in national polls.
When there were 10 candidates in the race, Kasich was polling in the bottom three. Now that there’s only five candidates, he’s only getting 7 percent to 12 percent support.
With winner-take-all primaries in Ohio and Florida not until March 15, neither Kasich or Rubio will budge before then.
Trump will be in total control before that date, but even if there’s a sliver of hope for either Kasich or Rubio, it’s lost on March 15.
Trump has comfortable leads in North Carolina and Illinois, two other larger states with primaries on that date.
Polls show Trump beating Rubio in the senator’s home state by a lot.
Polls also show a close race between Trump and Kasich in Ohio. But that’s not a good sign for Kasich as he’s very popular in Ohio and can’t show dominance in his own state.
Kasich said earlier this week on Fox News that “we really haven’t put the effort in” Ohio in explaining why there’s a close race here between him and Trump.
Head-to-head
Poll data has Kasich beating Trump in Ohio in a one-on-one race, but there’s no way it will be just the two of them come March 15.
Kasich has also touted polls that has him in second place in Michigan, which is the largest of four states holding Republican races on March 8. However, he has less than half of Trump’s support in Michigan.
Kasich – and Cruz and Rubio for that matter – don’t need second-place finishes behind Trump. They need wins in big states, and those races become winner-take-all-delegates on March 15 so coming in second doesn’t count for anything when collecting delegates.
When the results come in March 15, don’t be surprised if that’s the end of the Republican presidential campaign, and Trump becomes the most unlikely GOP nominee in the history of the party.