John Kasich tasted victory for the first time in 2016 with a primary win in Ohio, and it came at precisely the moment he lost his chance to become the Republican presidential nominee without unprecedented chaos.

Despite the victory celebration at Kasich’s Ohio headquarters, there are not enough contests left – with enough delegates at stake – to lift Kasich to the top of the GOP field ahead of the Republican National Convention in July.


Indeed, Kasich would need to secure more than 100 percent of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination without going to a contested convention.

Kasich seemed to acknowledge that, foreshadowing a long campaign that yields a convention with more than one candidate still standing. “I may go to the convention before this is over with more delegates than anyone else,” Kasich boasted to CNN after the network called the race.

The math is daunting. Kasich entered the day with just 63 delegates out of the more than 1,000 already awarded. He’ll claim another 66 from Ohio, and at best would claim a significant share of delegates in Illinois. But with only 1,000 delegates remaining on the calendar after Tuesday, Kasich won’t be able to clear a majority – the 1,237 delegates necessary to win the nomination outright.

His team now is left to hope that Donald Trump, too, fails to acquire enough delegates to seal the nomination before the convention.

“It’s increasingly likely that no one will have a majority going into the convention,” said John Sununu, a former New Hampshire senator and Kasich surrogate. “Every delegate, every vote becomes important.”

While Kasich’s ascension seems unlikely, the bigger victory in Ohio may be for the party’s anti-Trump forces. Ohio denies Trump a crucial pot of delegates that could have put him on a clear trajectory to claim the Republican nomination himself. Instead, he now faces a three-month slog against rival Ted Cruz en route to the convention.

Kasich has stubbornly refused to discuss his campaign’s convention strategy – though it’s clear he needs one and that he has a team considering it. He’s tapped Jai Chabria, a longtime Ohio hand, to oversee those efforts.

Perhaps his greatest asset in the ensuing weeks is the tone of his campaign – an intentionally optimistic contrast to the dour and resentful tone often embodied by the campaigns of Trump and Cruz.

“The degree to which John Kasich in that environment is noticed, is paid attention to and can begin to crystallize the larger choice -- is he able to win states after Ohio based on the clarity of that choice?” wondered Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. “That’s the open question.”

To Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Kasich’s home-state win was a bare minimum achievement for a credible presidential contender. The onus is now on him to prove that he can win elsewhere with the same uplifting and inclusive message that helped him stave off Trump in Ohio.

“You’ve got to be able to translate the brand outside your backyard,” he said. “The real challenge that he faces is how does he make that brand work for him beyond Ohio?”

If Trump can’t secure the nomination outright by winning a majority of delegates ahead of the convention, then Kasich is counting on a contested convention in which allegiances and loyalties shift dramatically. It would require a dramatic reversal for convention delegates – who will almost certainly head to the convention overwhelmingly supporting anti-establishment candidates Trump and Cruz – to flip their support to a candidate running on his depth of experience and establishment credentials.

But Kasich intends to slog along. His next stop is Pennsylvania on Wednesday, and he has three town halls scheduled in Utah on Friday.

John Brabender, a senior adviser to Rick Santorum’s 2016 presidential bid, said Kasich can play up his Pittsburgh roots if the campaign turns toward the industrial state – and he may be the only option to challenge Trump, who’s excelled among the blue-collar, industrial workers prominent there.

“Both of them will do well there,” he said. “I do think that in some regards, Kasich is probably the most viable opponent to Trump in Pennsylvania.”

Brabender said Kasich’s presence could be crucial to denying Trump delegates across the northeast and more moderate states that are still on the calendar, from Maryland and Delaware, to Rhode Island and Connecticut.

“Kasich, who’s probably seen as more moderate … I think will benefit in states like New York and Pennsylvania,” he said.