EYE ON 2020

Kasich considers run for presidency

Associated Press

BEXLEY, Ohio

Outgoing Ohio Gov. John Kasich said Thursday that he’d prefer to run for president as a Republican, but only if he’s entering a primary he could win.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Kasich acknowledged he probably couldn’t defeat President Donald Trump if the election took place today.

He says he’s seriously considering his options and letting his advisers monitor the daily troubles Trump is facing, including talk of impeachment.

“If you’re going to run as a Republican, you have to have a sense that if you get into primaries you can win. Right now, I probably couldn’t win,” he told the AP. “But that’s today. It’s ever changing.”

Primary challenges against incumbent presidents are rare but not unprecedented. The last time it happened was in 1992, when Republican Pat Buchanan unsuccessfully challenged President George H.W. Bush. Twelve years earlier, Democrat Ted Kennedy mounted a challenge to President Jimmy Carter.

Kasich, leaving office after eight years because of term limits, has previously made two presidential runs. Should he enter the Republican fray in 2020, it would put in play his electorally critical home state, which Kasich won resoundingly in the 2016 primary against Trump and others.

Kasich didn’t address recent developments such as Wednesday’s sentencing of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to three years in prison for crimes that included arranging the payment of hush money to conceal Trump’s alleged sexual affairs.

Kasich said he’s been told there’s money around the country for a run but acknowledged that fundraising would be a factor.

“If you’re not around the hoop, you can’t get a rebound,” Kasich said. “So we’re hanging around the hoop, and we’re very serious about this. How would we not be? It’s not like I wouldn’t do it,” he said of a potential run. “You can’t be afraid to do it.”

Trump said in a Fox-TV interview Thursday that he hopes Kasich or retiring Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake mount a primary challenge.

Kasich’s political adviser, John Weaver, responded: “Be careful what you wish for.”

Kasich was the last primary challenger left in the GOP race when he stepped down in 2016, even though he only won his home state of Ohio. But he has been a consistent critic of Trump since then, dinging the president on everything from tax cuts that weren’t paid for to the immigration policy of family separation.