Less than a month to go before the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, WI and one of the keynote speakers has already been announced, except they are affiliated with the opposition party.

On July 20, former Ohio governor John Kasich endorsed Biden and announced he would speak at the convention. 

The centrist republican has been a long-time critic of the current president.

Kasich ran and placed fourth in the same 2016 Republican primary that Donald Trump won.

After dropping out, Kasich did not support his party’s nominee and when it came to Election Day, he wrote-in Arizona Senator John McCain instead of voting for Trump.

In 2017, there were discussions about him forming a unity-ticket in 2020 with Democratic Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper as they were touring the country talking about bipartisan solutions to policy matters. 

When it came to impeachment of the president, the former governor split from his party again and supported it. 

“This behavior in my opinion can not be tolerated and action is gonna have to be taken,” he told CNN in October, before the vote for Trump’s impeachment in the House of Representatives. 

Kasich is the latest republican to join Biden’s campaign. 

“43 Alumni for Biden” is a group started by former George W. Bush officials to mobilize disaffected Republicans to vote for the Democratic nominee. 

Other Republican figures, like former chief of staff to the vice president Dan Quayle and strong advocate for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Bill Kristol tweeted in favor of Kasich speaking at the convention. 

“It's great that John Kasich will speak at the (virtual) Democratic convention,” Kristol tweeted. 

It was announced that the convention would be mostly virtual on June 24. The DNC said that although Biden will be accepting the nomination in Wisconsin, the thousands of delegates will be casting their votes remotely. 

But how has Joe Biden been able to court many members of the GOP?

When Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders dropped out of the Democratic presidential primary on April 8, this essentially made Biden the nominee, but also meant he was going to have to appeal to progressives to keep their enthusiasm going until election night. 

He was going to have to do this while trying to find Republicans to join his movement.

Sanders endorsed Biden less than a week after suspending his campaign. Fellow progressive and presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren followed the next day with her endorsement. 

Senator Sanders made sure to mobilize his staff quickly to help Biden. The two men set up unity task forces that were led by high-profile politicians that backed their aspirations. John Kerry and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez led the task force on climate change.

Former aides to Sanders have worked on strategies and advertisements to mobilize the Latino vote for Biden as the voting bloc has been a weakness for his campaign.

With all of this being done early, the former vice president has at least on paper unified the party and is freed up to focus on Republican voters. 

Biden has also limited his attacks to the president, not his voters. Unlike Hillary Clinton in 2016, when she said half of Trump’s supporters can be placed in the “basket of deplorables.”

The former vice president has continued to defend working with members of Congress from across the aisle and he has not ruled out choosing a Republican running mate, although it is unlikely. 

For the Biden campaign to reach out to Kasich was reasonable since the two men did a joint event at the University of Delaware in October 2017, where they talked about bridging political and partisan divides under the Trump era.

Kasich’s speech will be reminiscent of Michael Bloomberg’s address at the 2016 convention in Philadelphia. 

A political independent at the time, Bloomberg formerly served as the Republican mayor of New York City. 

Both men were seen as outsiders to Democrats, but they are highlighted to broaden their coalition. 

For Kasich to endorse Biden could potentially put the state of Ohio into play for Democrats.

He was a popular governor who consistently showed bipartisanship and a Morning Consult survey found that 49% percent of Democrats in Ohio approved of his job performance.  

A Gallup poll from June revealed that only 2% of Democrats across the country approved of President Trump’s performance. 

A poll from Quinnipiac University released on June 24 showed Biden narrowly leading Trump by one point, yet Trump won Ohio by eight points in 2016.

The Buckeye State has been categorized as a reliable predictor of presidential elections since their voters have sided with the eventual winner since 1964.