Ohio’s GOP delegates getting ready for contested Cleveland

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

Going through plans for breakfast speakers, entertainment outings and receptions at the upcoming Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio GOP Chairman Matt Borges told his state’s delegates to also plan on a party the last night to “celebrate after Governor Kasich’s acceptance speech.”

Borges said the 66 delegates are ready to vote for Gov. John Kasich for presidential nominee “as many times as it takes.” The delegates met just north of Columbus on Friday to go over convention plans from hotel arrangements and logistics to a gathering at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

There was also plenty of pep talk for the Kasich bid, which depends on businessman Donald Trump falling short of a majority and delegates moving to Kasich on subsequent ballots based on his pitch as the party’s best hope in November.

Kasich’s entire delegate slate will go to the convention because he won the March 15 winner-take-all Ohio primary, he remains a distant third to Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz with only 153 overall. Trump has scoffed at Kasich’s campaign for winning only his home-state primary and urged that he drop out. The upcoming Indiana primary looms as key to the effort to deny Trump a first-ballot nomination.

“Nothing’s really changed,” Borges said after the delegation meeting. “The plan is still the same: Get to the convention. If nobody has 1,237 [delegate majority], it becomes open, the delegates select, and that’s when his [Kasich’s] message that ‘I’m the one who can beat [Democratic front-runner] Hillary Clinton’ takes over.”

Two longtime Kasich supporters, Don Thibaut and Jo Ann Davidson, were named to represent Ohio on the convention rules committee, which plays a potentially pivotal role. Davidson is a former Ohio House speaker and veteran of conventions dating to the 1976 contested convention in which she was a delegate for Gerald Ford as he turned back Ronald Reagan’s challenge for the nomination.

Davidson doesn’t think there will be any rules that would block Kasich’s “legitimate” path to win the nomination. But she said that if the voting continues through multiple ballots, there are many variables, so “who knows what’s going to happen?”