MCKEES ROCKS, Pa. – Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) was counting on voters in five northeastern states to give him a breakthrough. Instead they handed five landslide wins to Donald Trump, and narrowly pushed Kasich into third place in the state where he was born.

In delegate terms, Kasich’s losses were minor. Yet compared to the expectations of just one month ago, they were body blows. States like Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Maryland seemed uniquely ready for a Kasich candidacy, which resembled the sort of pragmatic Republican campaigns that sometimes win in those blue states.

“We feel very good about Pennsylvania,” Kasich said on March 30 at an MSNBC-sponsored town hall in New York. “We think we’re going to be aggressively getting support here in New York. And then we head east, you know, then at that point, frankly, a vote for Cruz will be a vote for Trump.”

While Kasich won delegates in New York, and shut out Cruz, Tuesday’s primaries seemed to put limits on the pragmatic Republican vote. Kasich ran strong in suburbs, running just a few thousand votes behind Trump in Maryland’s Montgomery County and beating him in Connecticut’s wealthy enclaves of Darien and New Canaan.

Kasich also held Trump below 50 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania’s Montgomery County, the suburbs of Philadelphia where Democrats now dominate in presidential elections.

But in Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh and this small hometown that Kasich evokes in every stump speech, Trump was on track for a landslide. On Monday night, when Kasich returned to McKees Rocks for a final pre-vote rally, some of the people who’d known him as a boy worried that the election had slipped away.

“He was a fighter even when he was a little kid,” said Jack Burick, 88, whose son played basketball with the young Kasich. “I wish he’d fight harder. I thought he had the momentum. He was comin’ along real good. And today it’s like, flat. Yesterday it was flat.”

If a campaign event can reveal anything, Kasich’s homecoming hinted at the limits of his appeal. A high school gym was bustling, but not quite full. For once, Kasich goofed around with some rock star optics, walking out to the roar of Styx’s “Renegade,” a favorite song at Pirates games. He spoke emotionally, and with more detail than usual, about the car crash that killed his parents.

The rest of his speech was a mixture of inspiration and talk of how local control and smart use of technology will fix the country, a far cry from the increasingly apocalyptic talk of Trump and Cruz. After issuing his biggest applause line – “I won’t take the low road to the highest office in the land” – Kasich opted against criticizing his rivals, and decided instead to riff about patriotism.

“We were watching Chariots of Fire, and in the movie, they walk into the stadium with flags,” said Kasich. “The Americans are waving the flag, and people cheer. My daughter said, ‘what does that mean to you?’ I said, ‘let me tell you, sweetie – can you imagine being born anywhere but the United States of America?'”

It was a contrast with the news that had rattled some of the voters in the room, that Kasich had cut a deal with Cruz to skip the upcoming Indiana primary in order to face Trump one-on-one in Oregon and New Mexico. That bothered Kasich supporters who viewed both Trump and Cruz as unacceptable.

“They should have kept that quiet, like in the old days when they made a deal,” said Rob Dupain, 45, who had been canvassing for Kasich and heard angry voters say that the “deal” inspired them to vote for Trump.

Other voters looked past the deal, remembering how “Johnny” Kasich, the kid who played basketball and punched above his weight, had been such a gentleman that friends assumed he’d run for pole.

“Look at the other options: You’ve got the smarmy one from Texas and then you’ve got the guy with no clue from New York,” said Laura Perri, 58. “My gosh, it’s such an obvious choice! I hate to say this but if one of them gets it I’ll have to vote for Hillary or Bernie.”

In polls, Kasich tests far better than his rivals as a general election candidate. Largely untouched by negative ads, he has the highest favorable ratings of anyone still running for president.

Little of that mattered in the Trump wave. Pennsylvania, Kasich lost to Cruz by 14 points with voters who wanted a candidate who shared their values. He lost by 4 points among voters seeking “electability,” despite polls that showed him winning the state in November while Cruz and Trump would lose it.

Kasich fared better in other states, but lost on every measure to Trump. That baffled Gary Sasse, who had been a co-chair of Sen. Marco Rubio’s, R-Florida, campaign in the state before moving to Kasich.

“On trade policy, immigration, Trump graphically gets that message out,” said Sasse. “He appeals to people who say we’re living in a much less egalitarian society. He’s running against the elite from Trump Tower, and anyone is ‘establishment’ if he says so.”

Kasich’s inability to get past that frustrated the conservatives who ask why he is still in the race. “There would be no need for a Cruz-Kasich pact if Kasich had done the responsible thing long ago and dropped out,” said Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, which brought conservatives together for a special “Against Trump” issue in January. “Yes, Cruz is weak in the Northeast, but it’s not like Kasich is beating Trump there regardless. If Trump is the nominee, Kasich’s stubborn and mystifying crusade will still bear some measure of the blame.”

On Tuesday night, as the votes were tallied, Kasich was silent. He had fulfilled his part of the deal with Cruz by scrapping an election night speech in Indianapolis, heading home instead to Ohio before planned campaign stops in Oregon and California.

The night before, seeing what might come, some of Kasich’s most diehard fans wondered if he could break through.

“If you’re not one of the Kardashians, nobody wants to hear you,” said Laura Perri. “He doesn’t yell, he doesn’t make rude comments. Now, I mean no offense to Donald Trump; I really used to love Celebrity Apprentice.”

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