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Cleveland Plain Dealer...
Kasich ponders road
ahead in view of Issue 2 defeat, poor approval rating
COLUMBUS, Ohio - To say that Ohio Gov. John Kasich suffered a setback
this week with the resounding defeat of Issue 2 might be an
understatement, given the potential side implications for the
first-year chief executive.
Kasich is a brand unto himself, with a penchant for winning people over
with his persistence and confident understanding of the inner workings
of government, learned from his years as a congressman. And if that
doesn’t impress you, Kasich bets his Rolodex of friends across the
country willing to vouch for his capabilities will.
But the overwhelming vote to repeal the collective bargaining law that
was championed by the Republican governor, coupled with his dismal job
approval ratings, have left brand Kasich in tatters. It leaves to
question how Kasich, whose political aspirations extend beyond Ohio,
will be able to continue pushing through his agenda.
“This will take him off the national radar for a bit, and that is
probably good for him,” said Bradley Smith, a Capital University law
professor and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission. “It
is remarkable for a guy that has been in office for just 10 months that
people would be so dissatisfied, and now his signature piece of
legislation has failed.
“Obviously the defeat of Issue 2 and the margin of defeat won’t help
him,” Smith continued. “But in politics we have this term -- ‘turning
lemons into lemonade’ -- and I think that is what he will try to do. I
think by removing him from the national stage for a little bit, that
will be helpful.”
Some of the governor’s closest friends say it would be a mistake for
anyone to count Kasich out.
“This is a bump in the road because of the message that it sends to
people looking to do business in Ohio and people looking to keep doing
business in Ohio and the position they see John in,” said former Ohio
Republican congressman David Hobson, who served in Congress and on the
same budget committee with Kasich.
Kasich’s attack plan to this point has largely involved working
directly with a compliant, GOP-controlled state legislature to help
grease the skids for his agenda. But Hobson, who counts Kasich as a
close friend, said the governor needs to take seriously his low
approval numbers and start taking his message directly to Ohioans.
A Quinnipiac University poll released on Nov. 10 placed the governor’s
approval rating at 36 percent. Other polls have shown similar results,
making Kasich among the most unpopular governors in the country. Hobson
is betting the governor will rise to the occasion.
“This is what John is very good at. He is going to have to convince
people to do the right thing, and it won’t be easy,” Hobson said. “John
is a very good marketer for things that he believes in. He is one of
the best I’ve ever seen. And he’s going to have to take his message
beyond the legislature and to the public.
“He’s not going to let any of this deter him from what he wants to do,”
Hobson said.
Kasich, a former Fox News show host and political pundit, has been a
regular on several of the cable channel’s highly rated news programs.
His kinetic persona has also landed him invitations on the Sunday
morning television news circuit, and he’s been featured in national
newspapers and magazines.
Among his close political friends are Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour
and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. He urged Barbour earlier this year
to run for president. And recently, with Barbour out of the race, he
encouraged Christie to seek the GOP presidential nomination. Many
believe it is Kasich who really wants to end up in the White House.
“I think we can probably remove him as a vice president nominee for
2012,” Smith said.
But Kasich can find solace in the fact that he is not up for
re-election until 2014, plenty of time for the governor to rebound.
“And at that point the question will be, ‘do his policies have bite?
Did his agenda work?’” Smith said.
But how Kasich moves forward right now is anyone’s guess. On Tuesday,
after conceding the huge 22-point defeat of Issue 2, the governor was
unusually humble and uncharacteristically without answers.
“It requires me to take a deep breath and to spend some time reflecting
on what happened here. . . If you don’t win and people speak in a loud
voice, then you pay attention to what they have to say and think about
it,” he said.
“So, people ask what will you do. . . I can tell you now is a chance
for me to catch my breath and try to gather my thoughts together as to
what we do next,” the governor said.
Apparently, Kasich is still deep in thought. The governor did not make
himself available to the media for questions Thursday at an event in
Columbus and declined a request for an interview from The Plain Dealer.
One thing he has to be concerned about is keeping his Republican
support in the legislature. Many GOP lawmakers who helped Kasich move
key pieces of legislation this year will be up for re-election in 2012
and must weigh the risk of continuing to hitch their political fortunes
to an unpopular governor.
Veteran Republican lawmaker Lynn Wachtmann told The Plain Dealer on
Tuesday that lawmakers are right to be leery but aren’t likely to
compromise their conservative beliefs.
“I’m sure it’s going to temper us a little bit, but by and large our
members are fully supportive of less government, lower taxes and giving
more authority to the people,” said Wachtmann, a state representative
from Napoleon.
Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern considered the repealed
collective bargaining law, known as Senate Bill 5, an attack on Ohio’s
working middle class that voters will remember during next year’s
general election.
“Next year and beyond, all Republican candidates -- whether they are
running for the Statehouse or the White House -- will have to answer
the basic question of whether or not they stood up for Ohio’s middle
class over the last year,” Redfern said.
“Our Republican friends in the Statehouse who voted for Senate Bill 5
will have to answer for those votes,” he said.
Kasich, who ushered Senate Bill 5 through the legislature -- lobbying
state senators to support the partisan measure -- characterized the law
as a way of helping local governments contain their costs. Opponents,
however, said it was tantamount to union busting and would have
negatively affected Ohio’s first responders and other unionized workers.
Ohio House Speaker William G. Batchelder, one of the governor’s
staunchest supporters in the legislature, said pieces of the law will
be brought back early next year as independent bills. But he hopes to
have more union support in writing the bills.
Batchelder said he has no indication that Republicans are pulling back
on their support of the governor or his goal of reforming Ohio’s nearly
three-decade-old collective bargaining rules.
“No, that’s not happening in our caucus,” the speaker said.
He recalled how Republican former Gov. James A. Rhodes was similarly
rejected by voters just a year after he was elected, when he proposed
the Ohio Bond Commission.
“He just got his head beaten in,” Batchelder said. “Of course, in ‘66
he had been re-elected by the largest margin a governor had ever had.
“So we have a lot to do. We have an obligation to the people to turn
the page and go on,” he said.
Hobson said one way or another before he leaves office, the governor
will see to it that Ohio’s collective bargaining rules are reformed.
“John will learn from this, he will grow from this and he will figure
out a . . . better way to get this done,” Hobson said. “He will not let
this drive him to anger. He will drive it to a positive.”
Read this and other articles at the Cleveland Plain Dealer
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