John Kasich Tells Portland Town Hall: "I'm Going to Keep Going"

"I've decided to keep going and there are going to be people who criticize me for that."

That was the message Ohio Governor John Kasich told a Portland Town Hall Thursday afternoon.

"I'm going to do my very best," he added. "No one tells me what to do except my wife."

Kasich has been under a lot of pressure from Republican front-runner Donald Trump and others to drop out of the race.

Kasich told the crowd that he knows on some level that it doesn't make sense, that he's been outspent 50-1.

"I started out with zero name i.d.," he said. "I never thought that there wouldn't be enough oxygen in the room. I started at zero but we rose.

"Last week I even won Manhattan Island and, as Frankie said, 'If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere."

Kasich talked about how he seems himself as different than his two opponents.

"I think there are two paths - do we take a path where we are losers, where nothing works in America and we should withdraw from the world and chart our own path," he said. "Or do we take the path where we can have hope?"

Kasich talked about his career, which took him to Congress in what he said was a different time, a time when Democrats and Republicans could work together.

"I believe that the problems we face can be solved if we remember that we are Americans before we are Republicans and Democrats."

Kaisch didn't mention Donald Trump until a person in the audience asked him about him.

"If Donald Trump goes to the Convention short of the exact number he needs, he will not be picked," Kasich said. "If he thinks he's going to win with 73 percent of women not liking him... I don't think so."

On Oregon's marijuana laws, Kasich said as president, he would not try to change them.

"I'm not sending federal forces into your state to tell you what to do," Kasich said. "I don't agree with them but it's your choice."

Kasich ended the talk on a self-deprecating note.

"If you didn't like my presentation, don't tell anybody," he said.

Kasich has an uphill battle to win Oregon's May 17 primary - even after making a deal with Texas Senator in which Cruz stays out of Oregon.

His campaign missed a deadline to get his picture and information into the state's voter guide.

And then Thursday, a new statewide poll of likely Republican voters put Kasich in third place.

The poll put Trump in first with 43 percent, Cruz in second with 26 percent, Kasich in this with 17 percent, just ahead of undecided, 13 percent.