Advisers to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz say there's no way they'll allow John Kasich to even compete at a contested national convention — let alone prevail.

Trump and Cruz are betting that their dual dominance in the delegate hunt will permanently box out the Ohio governor, who has no mathematical path to the nomination and is openly pursuing a floor fight at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. And their aides say Kasich won't even make it to the floor.


“There is virtually zero chance he can even be nominated,” Saul Anuzis, a former Michigan Republican national committeeman who’s advising Cruz on his convention strategy, told POLITICO. “It’s a two-man race.”

Their confidence is rooted in the fact that Trump and Cruz are nearly certain to control the lion’s share of the 2,472 delegates participating in the July convention. Together, they’ve earned more than 1,000 delegate slots to Kasich’s 136. And those delegates will ultimately approve the rules that govern a contested convention.

In addition, a rule adopted at the 2012 convention — pushed by supporters of Mitt Romney to box out Ron Paul — requires that any candidate eligible for the nomination win the majority of delegates in eight states or territories. In 31 contests so far, Kasich’s only win came Tuesday night in Ohio — his home state — and it’s unlikely he’ll command majority support in seven of the remaining 20 contests.

There’s a small chance Cruz could fail to meet the target as well. He’s only won majority support in four contests so far. Trump, with a dominant win in the Northern Mariana Islands early Tuesday, became the first candidate to cross the threshold.

To be sure, the convention rules will get a thorough review and revision when delegates convene in Cleveland, raising the possibility that the threshold to participate could be lowered, making room for Kasich. But with Trump and Cruz delegates at the helm, it’s unlikely they’ll adjust it to help a rival.

“The Cruz folks would never allow the rules to be changed and of course we wouldn't either,” said Barry Bennett, who’s coordinating Trump’s convention strategy. “The laws of math are not amendable.”

Trump’s resounding wins in Florida, Illinois and North Carolina on Tuesday may preclude a contested convention altogether. If he secures the support of a majority of delegates over the next three months, he would enter Cleveland as the presumptive nominee and head off any challenge to his supremacy. But Kasich has predicated his candidacy on the notion that no one will have a majority entering the convention. What’s been unclear until now is that even if he’s right, Kasich may have little reason to hope he’ll get the party’s nod.

A Kasich spokesman said the naysaying only fuels the governor further. "With so many states still to go, and the map becoming increasingly Kasich-friendly, there's little doubt we will be going all the way to Cleveland,” said the spokesman, Rob Nichols. “ The same people trying to write us off at the convention were also trying to write us off for the first debate, for New Hampshire, after South Carolina and countless other times. How'd that work out? We're very comfortable with our place, our strategy and our future."

In that vein, Kasich's campaign foreshadowed its plans for a convention brawl late Tuesday, naming Stu Spencer and Charlie Black — two veterans of the last contested convention, the 1976 fight between President Gerald Ford and an insurgent Ronald Reagan — to his national strategy team.

Tom Rath, a Kasich adviser from New Hampshire and veteran of the Republican convention process, said Trump and Cruz’s advisers may be overlooking the role of politics at the convention. If a contested convention arrives, and Kasich is dramatically outpolling Trump and Cruz against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, convention delegates may make judgments based on political calculus.

“It’s a political convention and sooner or later, the realities of the moment politically, which we cannot foresee now, will overwhelm all the process in the world,” Rath said. “You cannot make a judgment about what could happen until you know the political context within which that action is happening.”

Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican Congressman and Kasich supporter, added that convention delegates must consider who can win in November as part of their process. “The rule of the party is to make sure to advance the best candidate for the general election. I think all the delegates are going to have to sit down and think this through very carefully.

Rath said that if Trump and Cruz are unable to break a deadlock to hand one of them the nomination, convention delegates can suspend their rules — including the eight-state threshold — to give other candidates the chance to put their names forward. Paul Ryan, who as House speaker presides over the convention, would preside over that process — and his determinations on suspending convention rules could carry the day. Rath added that a deadlocked situation could also elevate Kasich as critical tie breaker — perhaps the key to assembling a winning coalition.

Morton Blackwell, a Republican national committeeman from Virginia who has attended every national convention since 1964, said he foresaw the obstacle that the rules would cause and pressed to revise them at a meeting in January, before any primary contests had been held. He was ultimately shot down. He says he’s concerned that any attempt to lower the threshold now — at the expense of Trump and Cruz — would be viewed as an attempt by insiders to rig the convention against the two anti-establishment candidates.

“Reintroducing it now would be a cause of war,” he said. “I don’t want the scandal of a change in the rules … I think we’re much more likely to lose if there’s an attempt to change the rules no matter who it helps or hurts.”