Deputy President William Ruto has recently been on a charm offensive crafting alliances with like-minded leaders across the country including those from the opposition NASA.
And recently when he visited Uganda, the former Eldoret North MP was accompanied by three governors among them two from opposition leader Raila Odinga's ODM party.
Ruto knows that the Jubilee support alone may not propel him to the presidency. That he has to calm down his rhetoric on Raila to win the hearts of some of the opposition leaders and their supporters.
Currently, he is working closely with four governors who were re-elected on August 8th on ODM tickets and they include Turkana's Josephat Nanok, Busia's Sospeter Ojaamong, Wycliffe Oparanya (Kakamega) and Amason Kingi (Kilifi).
These four county chiefs control a sizable number of voters who can determine the fate of a particular candidate at presidential level in 2022.
Ruto has been moving closer to Nanok, Ojaamong and Oparanya and the three have never ruled out the possibility of them working with him in 2022. In Kilifi, Kingi is on record having said he may opt out of Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho's campaign camp to join Ruto.
Busia, Turkana, Kilifi and Kakamega boast of over one million registered voters and this figure has the capacity to tilt presidential results in a case where the race is too close to call.
After all former President Mwai Kibaki beat Raila during the 2007 poll by only about 200,000 votes. Ruto's calculation in the above four counties may actually be making sense.