March 11, 2016

Rubio Suggests Ohio Voters Back Kasich to Stop Trump

Wilfredo Le/AP

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Desperate to stop Donald Trump’s march to the Republican presidential nomination, Marco Rubio’s campaign suggested on Friday that the best way to defeat Trump, in one state, at least, is not to vote for Rubio.

“If you are a Republican primary voter in Ohio and you want to defeat Donald Trump, your best chance in Ohio is John Kasich,” Rubio’s communications director Alex Conant said on CNN.

Rubio echoed that sentiment. “John Kasich is the only one who can beat Donald Trump in Ohio,” Rubio said. “If a voter in Ohio is motivated by stopping Donald Trump, I suspect that’s the only choice they can make.”

The comments come days before the high-stakes, winner-take-all primaries on Tuesday in Florida and Ohio, where both Rubio and Kasich are battling Trump on their home turf. Conant and Rubio’s remarks embrace the strategy put forward by Mitt Romney earlier this month, when he urged Republicans to vote for the most viable anti-Trump candidate in each state to deprive Trump of enough delegates to win the nomination. By this logic, Rubio’s supporters in Ohio would cast a strategic vote for Kasich, the state’s governor, to keep Trump from winning Ohio and its 66 delegates.

Polls show Kasich battling Trump for the lead in his home state, while Rubio is in single digits.

Conant argued that the favor should go both ways: Kasich supporters should vote for Rubio in Florida to stop Trump. “Marco Rubio is the one person who can beat Donald Trump here in Florida,” he said on CNN. “If you like John Kasich or you like Ted Cruz and you’re here in Florida, you need to vote for Marco Rubio because he’s the only one who can deprive Donald Trump of those 99 [Florida] delegates.”

But the Kasich campaign is reportedly not buying into this strategy.

Most polls show Rubio trailing Trump significantly in Florida.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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