Donald Trump’s Feud With John Kasich May Haunt Him in OhioElections in Ohio are trench warfare, fought by waves of volunteers swarming across hundreds of thousands of front porches to rap on doors.
Candidates open field offices by the dozen and send in hundreds of paid staff members, while a voter in a politically predictable state like New York or Alabama never receives so much as a robocall.
The presidential organizing model has trickled down to officeholders in Ohio, an essential swing state, where no one has built a better voter-mobilization team than the twice-elected governor, John Kasich.
But after a sulfurous feud between Mr. Kasich and Donald J. Trump, which boiled over in July at the Republican nominating convention in Cleveland, almost none of the governor’s seasoned political staff members are helping Mr. Trump in his close Ohio battle with Hillary Clinton.
A procession of senior political aides to Mr. Kasich spurned overtures to work for the Trump campaign.
The degree to which that will weaken Mr. Trump’s prospects in Ohio, where both candidates campaigned on Monday, is hard to measure.
But what is certain is that in Ohio, where Mrs. Clinton holds one of her narrowest polling leads in any battleground state, Mr. Trump cannot afford a ground game that underperforms, as it did in earlier primary contests.
“Kasich had the best ground game for the last eight years in Ohio,” said Michael Hartley, a Republican consultant in Columbus. “If you want to win Ohio, you need the Kasich team.”
Mr. Hartley opened Ohio field offices for Mr. Kasich ahead of his victory in the state’s presidential primary. But he did not want to work for Mr. Trump, citing loyalty as a member of Mr. Kasich’s team.
“You’re a family, and if somebody attacks your family and says awful things about your family, are you inclined to help that person?” he asked, alluding to Mr. Trump. “The answer is no. To be honest, the Trump people did this to themselves.”...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/us/politics/donald-trump-ohio-john-kasich.html?_r=0
