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Ohio Gov. Kasich is 16th notable entry into GOP race

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“And remember, Ohio is a microcosm”.

Reporter John Kosich is in New Hampshire this week as Kasich announces his bid for the presidency. It didn’t help when he avoided some key GOP gatherings and enjoyed a more leisurely travel schedule than the bevy of GOP presidential contenders.

Kasich ran for president once before, in 1999. He made a decision to accept the Medicaid expansion in President Obama’s 2010 health care law – which many Republican governors refused – angering many conservatives. The Republican scored a resounding victory in his 2014 re-election fight, receiving 64 percent of the vote and winning all but two of the Buckeye State’s 88 counties, albeit against a flawed Democratic challenger.

Kasich has been testing his message of fiscal responsibility and good governance in New Hampshire, but what he has been saying isn’t vastly different from the slew of current and former governors who are bidding for the GOP nomination, including Chris Christie of New Jersey and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. “It’s going to be someone else and us doing our own duty”. He is the kind of “blue collar” Republican who could avoid the “one percenter” attacks that dragged down Mitt Romney in 2012. Kasich often notes that since he took office, Ohio has added more than 300,000 jobs. His grandparents were Hungarian, Czech and Croatian immigrants.

Even then, Kasich broke with many in his party, voting for an assault-weapons ban, opposing “corporate welfare” and fighting defense spending he deemed wasteful. “Ohio went from tailspin to success under his bold, reform-minded leadership”.

And despite the controversy that followed Kasich’s move to privatize the state’s economic development arm and shield it from public records requests, economists have said the organization deserves credit for recruiting major companies such as General Electric at The Banks and Amazon in Central Ohio.

The official announcement will come at 11:30 a.m.as he takes the stage at his alma mater, Ohio State University in Columbus.

Kasich was able to unite Ohio’s firefighters, police officers, teachers, nurses, probation officers, and the overwhelming majority of Ohio voters. The state has a constitutional requirement to do so. John McCain’s 2008 bid, Fred Davis and John Weaver, and former New Hampshire Sen.

Kasich’s delayed campaign launch has elements of strategy.

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Mr Kasich tops many lists of potential vice-presidential nominees because of his experience and popularity in the crucial state of Ohio. The latest Real Clear Politics aggregate of national polls has Mr. Kasich at 1.5 percent, in 12th place. The film is part of New Day’s seven-figure media buy that Bloomberg Politics reported earlier this month. “I give him this, he’s timed it well”.

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