On December 19, Ohio Governor John Kasich said he couldn’t win the 2020 Republican nomination against President Trump, and therefore he would stay out of Republican primaries. He appears to still be open to running as an independent in 2020, however. See this story.
The news follows the announcement that
President Donald Trump’s political operation will subsume much of the Republican Party’s apparatus ahead of 2020’s presidential election, party sources tell CNN, merging his already up and running re-election campaign with the Republican National Committee.
In non-duopoly circles Kasich is notorious for using dirty tricks to get the Libertarian Party thrown off the ballot in 2014; the Libertarians had to spend around $250,000 to petition to get back, on still less than the $750,000 or so Kasich and his allies may have spent in their efforts to remove the LP to clear the way for Kasich’s re-election.
Kasich has at times encouraged and at other times downplayed speculation that he may run outside the Republican Party.