'Ohio in decline' report reveals Gov. Kasich's budget 'razzle dazzle' as unproductive

It was par for the course for the politically compromised Columbus Dispatch to run another supportive headline about Ohio Gov. John Kasich's upcoming trip to New Hampshire.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich at a bill signing
ceremony in the Ohio Statehouse

Kasich's next out of state trip is designed to create more sound and fury about whether the term-limited, lame-duck Buckeye CEO will mount a third try in his long political life to win the White House during the 2020 presidential election cycle.

"Kasich's New Hampshire trip will create buzz" ran in the Sunday edition of Ohio's so-called "Greatest Home Newspaper," priming the pump in an otherwise dry well.

"John Kasich’s return to New Hampshire this week is likely to get widespread media coverage as a significant milestone toward what many view as his inevitable 2020 presidential campaign," the legacy Columbus newspaper wrote about a candidate and personality it has promoted for going on 40 years. 

In the same Sunday edition, though, in an article titled "Report documents Ohio’s job slide, presses candidates for solutions," about Ohio's economic slide down hill over the decades, Kasich's name isn't mentioned once, even though the former Wall Street banker who worked for Lehman Brothers before it crashed, setting the "Great Recession" in motion, ran promising to be a jobs governor who would "move the needle."

The only important needles Kasich has moved so far have moved in the wrong direction. Ohio's 69th governor has overseen lagging job growth that's under-performed the national job creation average for 63 straight months. He's sequestered a billion or more from local governments and schools, which have had to resort to tax hikes to keep services from deteriorating further. The one-time boy from McKees Rocks, PA, who wanted to become a Catholic priest, has seen the quality of Buckeye schools plummet from fifth to 22nd in the nation. And the list can go on and on, from creating hurdles on women's health to unproductive tax cuts for the wealthy, to more sinister episodes including the husband of his chief of staff who falsified data in a federal education grant and a dirty-tricks campaign to derail a potential challenger in 2014, Kasich and his kitchen cabinet have done some pretty awful things.

For Ohio voters, unfortunately, media who follow his every bombastic move or comment have fallen short of their vaunted duties and responsibilities as the Fourth Estate to delve into any meaninful investigative reporting on his many shadowy scandals.

This is not the kind of news Kasich will tout in New Hampshire about why he should duplicate his lackluster record in Columbus in Washington, as the rest of the nation plowed forward from policies Kasich believes in that always favor the private sector at the expense of the public sector.

Meanwhile, the report from The John Glenn School of Public Affairs on Ohio's decline, "Toward a New Ohio," released last week and co-authored by William Shkurti and Fran Stewart, offers lots of history and perspective along with a dozen questions the 2018 class of governor hopefuls should have to answer, if only Ohio media would ask them, instead of the daily volley about inter-party and internecine political dustups that are part of every campaign season, which usually have little if anything to do with the real issues of the day, that voters should use to make informed, not emotional, decisions about which candidate can move them forward instead of treading water or going in retrograde motion.

Some members of Ohio media are realizing, maybe eight years too late, that the razzle dazzle Kasich promised in 2010 was just so much snake oil that didn't cure the patient and may have made matters worse. One example of the political enlightenment some commentators now have, based on Kasich's nearly eight years in office, comes courtesy of Brent Larkin, a former Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial page writer, who takes Kasich to the woodshed on his duplicitous record on guns and gun legislation.

Larkin writes a truism in his opening sentence: "No one on the planet has a higher opinion of Ohio Gov. John Kasich than Ohio Gov. John Kasich." Larkin follows that up with another reality many Ohio media reporters, and all big-monied national reporters, are slow in reporting, that "some of the stuff that tumbles from this governor's mouth suggests he's become borderline delusional."

For perspective, John Kasich was one of 16 other Republicans who fought and lost the war to topple Donald Trump in 2016. Kasich's best showing came in New Hampshire, a small libertarian leaning state where his off-beat performance and personality can hit its target audience. But even in this tiny state, with only two congressional district, where Kasich returns soon to evoke memories of his distant, second-place loss to Trump, he'll find his fading star won't guide many wise men to his next manger scene. Kasich knew that if he stayed in the presidential primary race in 2016 media would be forced to follow his trajectory by portraying his fool's errand as the anti-Trump dancing bear as bucking his party. When it was all over, the former 18-year congressman from a reliably Republican district near Columbus only earned one Electoral College vote, just 269 shy of winning the nomination.

Blaming his poor performance two years ago on poor name id and poor fundraising, John Kasich thinks that will all change after he steps down from state CEO, when he'll wander in the wilderness for another three years, hoping to find a media perch to keep his voice in the mix. Unwanted and unliked back home, his poor track record from 2000 (his first try to run for president) and in 2016 won't open the doors big donors control.

Who will give him scores of millions of dollars to mount a third campaign in a Republican party firmly in the grasp of Trump? If Ohio's petulant and easily-angered leader decides the GOP isn't his vehicle going forward, running as a third-party candidate will only underscore the truthiness of Larkin's diagnosis of being delusional.

Based on the success of third-party candidates over thee last century, Kasich will become another biggest loser should he decide to abandon his life-long Republican Party. He may get his fair share of publicity, courtesy of adjunct PR departments like the Columbus Dispatch and national news crews ignorant of his work on the ground in swing-state Ohio. But he'll have little funding from the likes of the Koch Brothers or Sheldon Adelson when the rubber meets the 2020 road. As it is, those who believe in John Kasich enough to give him a few bucks to keep his media boat afloat come from Ohio. 

Kasich's now-documented flip flops, false promises and sever under-performance on a host of key issues Shkurti and Stewart focus on in their white paper on Ohio's decline will be both his calling card and his obituary.