--- title: Marco Rubio Says Vote for John Kasich in Ohio to Stop Trump description: Instead of playing to win, the Florida Senator hopes to make the frontrunner lose canonical: https://time.com/4255838/donald-trump-marco-rubio-john-kasich/ author: Alex Altman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-03-11T17:34:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-05T08:49:41.547Z article:section: Politics og:title: Marco Rubio Says Vote for John Kasich in Ohio to Stop Trump og:description: Instead of playing to win, the Florida Senator hopes to make the frontrunner lose og:url: https://time.com/4255838/donald-trump-marco-rubio-john-kasich/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt79af02011619b241/69888a900b72e308676e87cd/republican-debate1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3500 og:image:height: 1969 og:image:alt: Republican U.S. presidential candidates Rubio, Trump, Cruz and Kasich pose together at the start of the U.S. Republican presidential candidates debate in Detroit, og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Marco Rubio Says Vote for John Kasich in Ohio to Stop Trump twitter:description: Instead of playing to win, the Florida Senator hopes to make the frontrunner lose twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt79af02011619b241/69888a900b72e308676e87cd/republican-debate1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Marco Rubio Says Ohio Should Vote Kasich to Stop Trump > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=4cfcb9a9-fb60-4b62-91c2-eb82e9972f71&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Why It's So Hard to Attack Trump [Watch (HLS stream): Why It's So Hard to Attack Trump](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/X3BpgQ9x.m3u8) (3:13)  _Published 2016-03-02. Now, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are attempting to beat him at his own game—but will any attacks against Trump actually stick?_  by [Alex Altman](https://time.com/author/alex-altman/)  ## Alex Altman Altman is the executive features editor and deputy Washington bureau chief at TIME. Mar 11, 2016 5:34 PM UTC  by [Alex Altman](https://time.com/author/alex-altman/)  ## Alex Altman Altman is the executive features editor and deputy Washington bureau chief at TIME. Mar 11, 2016 5:34 PM UTC In a final frantic bid to stop Donald Trump, [Marco Rubio’s campaign](http://time.com/4255131/gop-debate-rubio-trump-cuba/) on Friday tried to broker an agreement among Trump’s remaining rivals to embrace a divide-and-conquer strategy to deny Trump the delegates to win the Republican nomination. Rubio’s campaign urged its supporters to back [Ohio Gov. John Kasich](http://time.com/4255168/gop-debate-kasich-trump-tiananmen-square/) in the Buckeye State’s pivotal March 15 primary, in hopes that a Kasich victory there, coupled with a Rubio win in his home state of Florida on the same day, will block Trump from amassing the 1,237 delegates required to sew up the GOP nomination before the party’s convention in Cleveland. **Read More**: [See Whether Republicans Can Stop Trump With TIME’s Delegate Calculator](http://time.com/4254330/donald-trump-republican-nomination-brokered-convention-delegate-calculator/) “If you are a Republican primary voter in Ohio and you want to defeat Donald Trump, your best chance in Ohio is John Kasich,” Alex Conant, Rubio’s communications director, told CNN. Speaking Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Rubio suggested that backers of Kasich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz should throw him their votes in Florida on Tuesday to deny Trump the Sunshine State’s 99 delegates. “There’s a lot of Kasich and Cruz supporters who realize that neither John Kasich nor Ted Cruz has any chance to win in Florida, and if they don’t want Donald Trump to be our nominee, then voting for John Kasich or Ted Cruz in Florida is a vote for Donald Trump,” he said. **Read More**: [Ben Carson Endorses Donald Trump](http://time.com/4255355/ben-carson-endorses-donald-trump/?xid=homepage) The idea of a nationwide “tactical voting” agreement has been discussed by party insiders for weeks. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the GOP’s presidential nominee in 2012, proposed the idea during a speech last week that urged party voters to reject Trump. “I would vote for Marco Rubio in Florida, for John Kasich in Ohio, and for Ted Cruz or whichever one of the other two contenders has the best chance of beating Mr. Trump in a given state,” Romney said. Rubio’s public embrace of the plan Friday does not mean his rivals will reciprocate. Rob Nichols, a Kasich spokesman, shrugged off the suggestion Friday, [according to the Associated Press](https://twitter.com/kronayne/status/708335515532140545). “We were going to win in Ohio, without his help, just as he’s going to lose in Florida without ours,” Nichols said. And while a pro-Cruz group has shifted some of the anti-Rubio advertising it intended to unleash in Florida into other states, the candidate held a rally Friday morning in Orlando. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Everybody knows what they're getting in Donald Trump. You've seen him on TV and interviews, so it's hard to attack him like you would a conventional politician because everybody has heard of him already. And it's pretty hard to reset that with a single jibe. [ MUSIC ] Over the next couple of weeks we're going to see all of these candidates and outsiders launching massive last ditch effort to stop Donald Trump, before the March 15th winner take all primary's. It' really too soon to tell if this will work, but ultimately It's now or never. When Donald Trump first started running a lot of the other candidates didn't really take him seriously, and so they didn't bother attacking him. They were much more concerned with fighting each other for the particular spot, whether it be the establishment or the conservative spot. There it is, the memorized twenty five second speech. Donald Trump is the master of insults and it's hard to beat him at his own game. When Mexico sends it's people. They're bringing drugs. Their rapists and some I assume are good people. And he has a particular gift at figuring out what is the thing that is going to most bother you. Low energy individual. So if you are going up against Trump they have to figure out. How to insult him in an equally devastating way and I don't know that the attacks that we've heard so far are actually going to work. Let me ask for a full length mirror. Maybe to make sure his pants weren't wet. I don't know. Then He's not a politician so there's not a record of votes that he took or bills that he sponsored or actions that he took. So a lot of that just becomes like well, yeah, I said that one time and now I'm saying this. And so people don't mind. Would never do that. [ LAUGH ] Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have spoken up a lot more directly going after him. He's not faced some of these attacks. So some of them we just don't know whether they will work or not. Or it's possible that they may work but they could turn out to be more useful to Democrats down the road. I think you already see Clinton's campaign portraying Trump as the divider and Hillary is the Uniter . >> America never stopped being great we have to make America whole. I was told by the campaign that they felt that the republican field had tried to define Trump a little too late and if they would not make the same mistake I don't think you're going to see Hillary herself attacking Trump. I think you're gonna see Bill Clinton and her surrogate certainly, attacking Trump. She wants to remain a very positive messenger. Almost in a Ronald Reagan kind of sense, the optimism of morning in America. Today is more love and kindness. Whereas, they would portray Donald Trump as night in America. The thing though is that Trump is wining the Republican primaries based largely off of white support and when it comes to general election, given all the constituencies that he's offended, will he still have the same power. Will he still be able to win, and will any of these attacks start to stick? And I think the Clinton campaign is betting on that they will. 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