COLUMBUS – Despite calls for him to drop out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Gov. John Kasich has been having fun on the campaign trail in in the Big Apple.
Photos circulated showing him chowing down on a mountain of food at a Bronx delicatessen Thursday and he got laughs with a joke about the chances that the GOP convention in Cleveland in July would be a contested one, something political experts say would be detrimental to efforts to unify the fractured party.
“You know why God invented pundits?” he quipped. “To make astrologers look accurate.”
Kasich went on the offensive in New York Friday, launching two new television ads aimed directly at rival Ted Cruz.
One of the 15- and 30-second commercials airing in New York City and on Long Island is titled “Values” and jabs the Texas senator for his remark about front-runner Donald Trump‘s “New York values” during a January debate.
“In Iowa, Ted Cruz sneered at our New York values,” the ad says. “Ted Cruz divides to get a vote. John Kasich unites to get things done. Kasich delivered on his word and turned his state around with grit and determination, something New Yorkers should appreciate.”
Cruz’s use of that phrase as a putdown has hung around his neck like an anchor in New York City, where’s he’s been skewered in the tabloids and repeatedly heckled at campaign events.
But Cruz is forging ahead in his quest to pick up delegates, insisting that he was criticizing the liberal policies often synonymous with New York and not the state itself.
The Kasich campaign’s second ad, titled “One Choice,” touts his electability.
“Ted Cruz can’t win the nomination outright and he can’t defeat Hillary Clinton either. John Kasich will win the convention and he’ll defeat Hillary Clinton in the fall,” it says.
New York’s primary is Tuesday and Kasich is hitting the trail hard in and around New York City with events in Fairfield, Conn., and Syracuse Friday and in Rochester, New Rochelle and Pearl River, N.Y., on Saturday.