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Gov. John Kasich taking steps toward presidential race
COLUMBUS
Though Gov. John Kasich hasn’t announced his candidacy for president, he is taking the steps needed to move in that direction.
Kasich, a Republican who is less than four months into his second term as governor, spoke Friday at a series of events in South Carolina and was to speak today in New Hampshire. Both are early 2016 presidential-primary states, and this is Kasich’s second visit to New Hampshire.
He’ll also be on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
Perhaps most telling is the creation of a political committee, New Day for America, established this week with the Ohio secretary of state. The Northeast Ohio Media Group was the first to report on the committee created by attorney E. Mark Braden, who’s worked with Kasich and a former chief counsel for the Republican National Committee.
The committee would allow Kasich to raise money for additional visits to early presidential primary states.
In September 2014, two months before he was overwhelmingly re-elected governor, Kasich told The Vindicator about a presidential bid in 2016, “Honestly, I just don’t see it. I tried it once. You come with me out to Iowa. You wouldn’t believe it. You’d never go to Iowa again. ... I don’t expect anything. I don’t even think about it.”
A month later, Kasich told The Washington Post he liked “the people of Iowa,” but not “the system they had where you had to pay to park your RV in a parking lot.”
So far this year, Kasich hasn’t visited Iowa, the first presidential-caucus state, though he has said he may go there. He also hasn’t visited the Mahoning Valley this year.
A recent poll in Ohio shows Kasich leading the presidential race in the state. But in polls in every other state and nationally, Kasich is either toward the bottom or isn’t even included.