Kasich is buoyant among skeptics in Georgia

The campaign comes to Georgia

Now just days away from the Georgia primary, presidential candidates are making plans to visit the state.

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Near the end of a town hall meeting Tuesday, Ohio Gov. John Kasich was stopped cold by a question from a retired Cobb County teacher who wondered why the Republican hasn’t “captured the imagination” of voters as well as Donald Trump.

“That’s why you’re at where you’re at,” Janet McCoy said to scattered gasps among the crowd of a few hundred at his Kennesaw State University event. Kasich, recalibrating, responded that “something must be working” since he’s still in the race.

“In the era of the 24 (hour) news cycle, I’m just not going to go out there and do something to just grab attention,” he said. “You’ve got to get on the phone and call people. Because you know what, miracles do happen.”

With Trump at the top of the polls in Georgia and other states heading into Tuesday’s SEC primary, Kasich is facing increasing pressure to electrify his sunny campaign message — or stand aside and make way for Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio to emerge as the mainstream Republican alternative.

“Miracles do happen” is likely not the signal his campaign wants to send a week before a crucial vote, though that was just one of the mixed signals Kasich sent throughout his daylong visit to Georgia.

After an address at the Georgia House, Kasich openly wondered why the party elite were not "clearing the decks" for him over Rubio, and he guaranteed a win in his home state primary on March 15. But, standing in a cramped multipurpose room at Kennesaw State's student center an hour later, he seemed much more blasé about his political future.

“I don’t know if my purpose is to be president. My purpose is to be out here, doing what I think I need to be doing,” he said. “We’ll see where it ends up. If it’s not this crusade, then it will be another one. Maybe it will be a really small one somewhere in my kid’s school. Who knows?”

As Rubio rattles off a string of new endorsements from former supporters of ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Kasich is eager to recapture the momentum that fueled him to a second-place finish earlier this month in New Hampshire. But the terrain he faces in the sweep of states that vote Tuesday is daunting.

The sunny, above-the-fray message and his more moderate record of building consensus with Democrats played well in New England, but it faces a tougher audience in places such as Georgia. A Channel 2 Action News poll released Monday showed Kasich at 8 percent — far behind the 23 percent that Rubio tallied.

But the Kasich campaign still has hopes for the Peach State. Georgia’s rules gives him the chance at picking off a few delegates if he places in the top two in any of Georgia’s 14 congressional districts, which explains why he’s targeting the two more moderate metro Atlanta districts that Mitt Romney wrested from Newt Gingrich in the state’s 2012 primary.

There’s an appetite for Kasich’s message among some Republicans in Georgia, but interviews with more than a dozen voters showed many were torn over whether he is the right candidate to be the prime alternative to Trump and Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

“I’m a moderate, and I honestly don’t have a favorite,” said Emily Southern, a student who arrived about an hour early to the rally. “But I know I’m tired of hearing about Cruz and Trump. They are dominating the media, and I want to hear from someone else.”

Ian Evans, a fellow undecided student, chimed in: “(Kasich) can do what he wants to do, but it would help Rubio if he gets out.”

Even some of Kasich’s ardent supporters worry it’s too late for him to stop Trump’s momentum. About one-quarter of the delegates needed to secure the nomination are up for grabs next week, and polls show the billionaire developer is poised to win the bulk of them.

“I’ve been desperately searching for a conservative Republican to support, and John Kasich is that guy,” said John Fleming, a Sandy Springs retiree who waited in an overflow crowd for the Ohioan’s event to begin. “A lot of mainstream Republicans are looking for a home, and I hope it’s not decided yet. But my greatest fear is that it’s already too late.”

Kasich, though, showed no signs of changing his messaging as more contests draw near.

He talked about toiling in “obscurity” for months in New Hampshire — he held more than 100 town hall meetings there — before his surprising finish in the primary gave him enough grist to stay in the race. And he resisted a plea from a supporter to hammer Trump at Thursday’s GOP debate in Texas, saying, “I ain’t going down that rabbit hole.”

As the first of his two town hall events in Georgia drew near an end, Kasich took stock of the room as if to relish the moment.

“I’ve already won,” he said. “When I have newspapers across the country saying this is a guy who can pull it together, when I have Democrats saying this is a guy I could support like Reagan, when I come to an event at Kennesaw State, man it’s icing on the cake.

“I’m the last governor standing. I think I’ve done pretty well.”