The departure — to be announced by Kasich at 5 p.m. in Columbus — fully clears the field for front-runner Donald Trump as the Republican nominee. Another rival, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), dropped out of the race Tuesday night.
Kasich, 63, entered the race with an impressive resume: 18 years in the House, where he built a reputation as a budget-cutter; a stint as a Fox News host; and four years as the popular governor of a presidential swing state.
His policy positions leaned toward the middle: for one thing, Kasich had defied his own party and expanded Medicaid, the federal health-care program for the poor, in Ohio. “People have accused me of, at times, having too big a heart,” Kasich said in one GOP debate. That centrist appeal made Kasich seem like a formidable general-election candidate.
But he never got there.
The high point of Kasich’s campaign came on March 15, when Kasich won the Ohio primary. He was showered in confetti, and promised to return to Ohio this fall as the GOP nominee.
“I’m getting ready to rent a covered wagon,” he said then. “We’re going to have a big sail and have the wind blow us to the Rocky Mountains and over the mountains to California.”
That was an odd metaphor, but an apt one. After Ohio, Kasich did about as well as somebody trying to cross the Rockies in a sail-powered wagon.
Kasich made odd strategic choices. He campaigned in Utah, even though rival Cruz was expected to dominate there — and did. Kasich campaigned in New York, the home turf of rival Trump, and hurt his own cause when he seemed to explain Judaism to Jewish voters in Brooklyn.