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Kasich boasts Ohio record at Youngstown rally
By Kalea Hall
YOUNGSTOWN
Kathi Creed of Liberty came to the John Kasich presidential campaign rally visibly displaying her support.
Her red Kasich campaign shirt stood out in the crowd of about 300 people at Brilex Industries where the Ohio governor spoke Monday – just like she thinks Kasich stands out among the other presidential candidates.
“I have been a supporter for decades,” Creed said. “He’s very tough and compassionate. He has the experience to go in there and take things on.”
Not long after she talked of support for Kasich, Creed was standing and cheering for the presidential nominee as his bus entered Brilex Industries’ Andrews Avenue plant to the U2 song “Beautiful Day.”
Youngstown State University President Jim Tressel and U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, escorted Kasich to center stage at the Brilex plant.
“This is our opportunity to step up for our governor,” Portman said. “He has served us extremely well.”
Portman noted some of the accomplishments Kasich was able to achieve while governor – including taking the state from an $8 billion deficit to a $2 million surplus.
“We were 48th in the country for job creation,” Portman said. [Now] “we are in the top 10 and on the way up.”
With the background of the local fabrication, machining and assembly plant, jobs became the starting point for Kasich’s speech. He said a politician should focus on three goals: jobs, jobs and jobs.
“Small business is the engine of economic growth,” he said. “That’s why they pay no income tax. We knew it would be easier for them to thrive and survive.”
In Ohio, Kasich noted how tax cuts for both small businesses and individuals helped grow the state’s economy.
“We had an explosion of jobs,” he said.
In total, Kasich maintains that during his time as governor 400,000 jobs have been created in Ohio.
Recently, though, there have been several job losses in the Mahoning Valley in the energy sector. Vallourec Star, a steel-pipe plant on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard Drive that supplies the oil and gas industry, has made repeated workforce reductions totaling about 180 jobs.
Parker Hannifin, a hydraulic gear pump plant on Intertech Drive in Youngstown, announced last fall it would close the plant over an 18-month period. That closure will bring the loss of 137 jobs.
Exterran, a Salt Springs Road company that makes compressors for the oil and gas industry, is to go on an indefinite shutdown this month. The plant employed 70.
“Those things go through cycles,” Kasich told a Vindicator reporter.
“We are beginning to see a rebound in the energy industry. There’s a lot more drilling going on.”
Also on the jobs front, Kasich mentioned the need to not only graduate students, but to graduate them with skills, which he said are the key to higher wages.
“If we are graduating them without skills they will have a lifetime of poverty,” he said.
Toward the end of his speech, Kasich talked about leadership, which seemed directed at the recent headlines of fights at Donald Trump campaign rallies.
“Leadership is not encouraging a toxic environment,” he said.
“This country is about us coming together.”
He later added that he will not “take the low road to the road to the highest office in the land.”
The people of each town, he said, need to have the confidence to change the area where they live.
“We know that the strength of the Mahoning Valley and the strength of Youngstown, which has been through some very tough times, is that we don’t give up,” Kasich said. “The sun is finally rising in the Mahoning Valley.”
Bill Catlin of Lordstown was in the crowd with a few others to see what Kasich had to say about Social Security.
“My prime concern is I’m worried about my children and whether Social Security will be around when they are retired,” Catlin said.
In the end, Kasich assured the crowd that “we are going to be just fine.”
“You are going to get your Social Security,” he said. “America continues to lead in the world.”