Don’t Look Now, But Ohio Might See A Kasich Senatorial Run

You might have thought the irascible John Kasich would, at some point, go gently into that good night (No, of course you didn’t), but now there may be the possibility that Kasich might be ever more visible as a member of the United States Senate.

That scenario didn’t lie in the cards until Friday, when the GOP frontrunner for the Senate seat in Ohio, Josh Mandel, pulled out of the race because of his wife’s illness. Mandel would have been a strong candidate; the former Marine won handily when he ran for the Ohio legislature and again when he was elected twice as the state’s treasurer. The only time he lost was when he ran against Sherrod Brown in the 2012 Senate race, although he was only six points shy.

With Mandel out, Kasich looms large as a potential candidate, having won the state’s presidential primary in 2016. He’s a veteran in Washington, having served almost 20 years in Congress.

Yet his chief strategist, John Weaver, dismissed the idea on Twitter on Friday, with a message that was blunt in its implications:

As Allahpundit notes at HotAir:

I assume he’ll be running in 2020 as an independent rather than futilely challenging Trump in the primary. If Democrats nominate a hard leftist, which looks like a safe bet, there’ll be a wide lane in the middle for a centrist to run.

As Allahpundit also points out, Kasich joined Colorado Democrat John Hickenlooper on a bipartisan health care plan, and there were rumors the two men had discussed running together in 2020.