Ohio Gov. John Kasich officially joined a super-sized field of presidential hopefuls Tuesday, becoming the 16th major contender for a Republican nomination that will be awarded next summer in Cleveland.
“I am here to ask you for your prayers, for your support, for your efforts because I have decided to run for president of the United States,” Kasich said during a late-morning kickoff staged on the campus of his alma mater, Ohio State University.
Before a crowd of about 2,000 in a speech that lasted more 40 minutes, Kasich said he wants to take his successes in Ohio to Washington, D.C., and apply them to the nation. He ticked them off to the crowd — budget surpluses, job growth and tax cuts.
“I’m going to take what we learned here in the Heartland (with) that band of brothers and sisters that I work with every day and we are going to take the lessons of the Heartland and straighten out Washington, D.C.” Kasich said.
A big part of that effort, Kasich said, involves teamwork.
That concept of teamwork is one reason Kasich isn’t intimidated by polling numbers that show him down in the pack of Republican candidates.
Naysayers, he said, have been telling him he couldn’t succeed since his first race for office in his 20s, when he beat an incumbent to become the youngest member of the Ohio Senate.
After that, he knocked off a sitting member of the House of Representatives. And when he ran for governor, he said, people told him he shouldn’t take on incumbent Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland.
Each time, he said, the naysayers were proved wrong.
“Together, we’ll prove them wrong again.”
Those races, he said, show what can be done by unifying people and working together.
Kasich’s chances will hinge in part on his ability to sell his brand of fiscal conservatism and blue-collar empathy — a theme prevalent in the campaign’s early slogan: “John Kasich’s for Us.” But his chances also hinge on his ability to overcome low national name-recognition and a jumble of rivals, all of whom have been running longer and several of whom have much clearer paths to victory.
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