Ohio Gov. John Kasich Monday morning said that he doesn't see the plan for a divide-and-conquer strategy with Florida Sen. Ted Cruz against GOP front-runner Donald Trump as "any big deal," and his decision to pull resources out of Indiana in favor of campaigning in Oregon and New Mexico is financial.
"I don't have, you know, like Daddy Warbucks behind me giving me all this money," Kasich said from a Philadelphia diner, where he was eating bites of breakfast between speaking with a gaggle of reporters. "I have to be careful about my resources and furthermore, the reason why I'm in this race is I'm the only one that beats Hillary Clinton. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure we don't lose the United States Senate, the Supreme Court, the state and local courthouse."
And, he told the reporters, in the impromptu interview appearing on Fox News'
"America's Newsroom" show, he's never told Indiana voters not to vote for him, but he's not going to spend money campaigning there.
"We have limited resources," said Kasich, who reportedly had just $1.2 million left in his war chest at the end of March. "Mine is the people's campaign. I have a campaign where we've been outspent five-to-one. You folks have been counting me out before I even got to New Hampshire and now we can't jam all of you into this diner."
Meanwhile, he touted his achievements, telling the reporters that there "hasn't been anybody you've ever met in politics who has lead more successful reform than John Kasich. No one."
In Ohio and in the House of Representatives, he said, "I balanced the budget, I shrunk the government. I've taken on welfare, I reformed the Pentagon, changed the state of Ohio. When you talk about reform you want to check my records and you will see I've been a reformer from the day I got into politics."
Further he denied that the collaboration is unfair to Trump.
"Who is it that feels, all you've got to do is get the right number of delegates and then you win?" said Kasich. "If you can't get the right number of delegates, you don't win and then the delegates who were selected through a democratic process get to choose. What's wrong with that?"
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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