Republicans desperate to stop Donald Trump from capturing the presidential nomination increased the pressure Wednesday on Gov. John Kasich of Ohio to quit the race, with Jeb Bush joining the growing number of party figures throwing their weight behind Sen. Ted Cruz.
Kasich refused, saying that he, not the Texas senator, was the best option to stop Trump. But his argument was undercut by his dismal showings Tuesday in Utah and Arizona, where he won no delegates — as well as by the surprise endorsement Wednesday morning by Bush of Cruz.
Bush, who dropped out of the presidential race last month, is the latest mainstream Republican — following Mitt Romney and Sen. Lindsey Graham — who is ideologically closer to Kasich, but whose embrace of Cruz is a strategic calculation that he has a better shot at stopping Trump.
In a statement, Bush called Cruz a "consistent, principled conservative who has demonstrated the ability to appeal to voters and win primary contests."
"For the sake of our party and country," he added, "we must move to overcome the divisiveness and vulgarity Donald Trump has brought into the political arena, or we will certainly lose our chance to defeat the Democratic nominee and reverse President Obama's failed policies."
Cruz himself pressed the issue Wednesday, a day after his resounding victory in Utah, where he won 69 percent of the vote, making him the first Republican candidate to win a majority in any state.
Trump took Arizona, while Kasich finished with even fewer votes there than did Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who dropped out last week after early voting had begun.
"If this were a head-to-head race, a direct head-to-head race between me and Donald, I would feel very confident that we would get to 1,237," Cruz said, citing the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination before the July convention. "The complicating factor is John Kasich. It is unclear if Kasich will bleed off just enough votes to give Trump victories and delegates in states he would not otherwise have won."
Kasich ignored all calls to step down. He campaigned Wednesday in Wisconsin, where the next Republican primary will be held April 5, and his advisers argued that the race's final stretch of 20 states, mostly in the Northeast, Middle Atlantic and the West Coast, put Kasich in a far stronger position than Cruz to halt Trump.
"When we get to Pennsylvania, we get to New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island — let me tell you, I drop out, Donald Trump is absolutely going to be the nominee," Kasich said. "I don't believe that Senator Cruz can come to the East and win."
Charlie Black, a strategic adviser for Kasich, echoed the theme, stressing that moderate Republicans dominate in most of the remaining states, not those who identify as "very conservative" or evangelical, who have been Cruz's base of support.
Kasich has won just one contest, Ohio, his home state. In the Northeast, he nearly beat Trump in Vermont, and came in second to Trump in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. But Cruz won Maine, where Kasich was a distant third.
Kasich is mathematically shut out from winning a majority of delegates before the last primaries, on June 7. His strategy is to emerge as a white knight at the national convention, under the assumption that Trump will arrive in Cleveland lacking enough delegates for a first-ballot nomination.
After Tuesday's voting, Trump had 739 delegates, Cruz had 465 and Kasich had 143.
Despite his huge deficiency, the Kasich campaign, citing national polls, argues that he would be the only Republican nominee with a chance of winning the White House in November.
A poll this week by The New York Times and CBS News showed Trump losing a general election contest to Hillary Clinton by 10 points, with Cruz falling behind Clinton by a narrower margin, but Kasich holding an advantage over her.
Strategists for Kasich argue that having two challengers to Trump will deny him more delegates in more places, especially states where most delegates are allocated based on congressional districts. These include Wisconsin, New York and California, whose trove of 172 delegates is the largest of any state.
That claim is "empirically false," said Chris Wilson, a pollster for Cruz. "The fact is, Trump has a ceiling that is demonstrated election after election. All John Kasich does is split the anti-Trump vote, thereby handing Trump a plurality in each of these states."
Even Romney, who had earlier professed no preference for any candidate as long as it was not Trump, seems to have concluded that only Cruz can stop him. He recorded telephone messages urging support for Cruz in Utah and Arizona. "At this point," Romney said on the calls, "a vote for John Kasich is a vote for Donald Trump."
All three candidates are looking to Wisconsin, where Kasich hopes to appeal in a Midwest industrial state similar to Ohio. An analysis of polling data by The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel recently showed Trump was highly unpopular in suburban counties near Milwaukee, which are some of the most favorable districts in the country for Republicans.
But Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has signaled that he favors Cruz.
"If you're someone who is uneasy with the front-runner, right now there's really only one candidate — if you're just looking at the numbers objectively — Senator Cruz, Ted Cruz is the only one who's got a chance other than Donald Trump to win the nomination," Walker said in a radio interview on Wednesday. "Statistically, my friend Governor Kasich cannot."
A problem for Kasich in emerging as the nominee at a contested convention is that current rules require candidates to win a majority of delegates from eight states to be on the ballot in Cleveland. Although that can theoretically be relaxed by the rules committee, delegates loyal to Trump and Cruz on the committee, likely to be in the majority, could block changes favorable to Kasich.
So desperate are some Republican leaders to stop Trump, believing he would lose the White House and threaten the party's grip on Congress, that they have urged Cruz and Kasich to coordinate efforts. The Ohio governor, say, might concentrate on districts in liberal Northern California, with the Texas senator focusing on more conservative Southern California.
But there is probably too much bad blood between Cruz and Kasich for that kind of détente. Cruz was furious that Kasich campaigned in Utah. Kasich is angry at Cruz's continual refrain that he is a spoiler and should quit.
"I think you could make a case for coordination," Black, the Kasich adviser, said. "But you can't coordinate with someone who's whining that you need to get out of the race."