Kasich assures us he’s a multi-tasker
During his quixotic 2016 presidential bid, Gov. John Kasich took umbrage whenever anyone wondered if he was shirking his day job by being on the campaign trail for months.
It was the same last week when asked about his nationwide book tour.
“These phones do work all the way back to Ohio,” Kasich told The Dispatch in — yes — a phone interview on his way to a CNN appearance Monday in New York City. He noted his next call was with his budget director, Tim Keen.
“I think I helped Ohio when I ran for president. People are proud of Ohio. They learned a lot about Ohio,” Kasich said.
And the theme of his new book needs to be shared beyond the Buckeye State’s borders, he said.
“The message that I have I think is a very good message and a very positive message for the country,” he said. “And I don’t think it should be just confined to the state of Ohio.” An audience of newsworthy Ohioans
Speaking of that CNN town hall with Anderson Cooper, many watchers probably wonder how so many key Ohio figures wound up in the audience.
There was Jim Obergefell of Cincinnati, lead plaintiff in the U.S. Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling nearly two years ago; East Liverpool Police Chief John Lane, who posted a photo that went viral last year of two overdosed adults passed out in the front seat of a vehicle with a 4-year-old boy in the back seat; Joy Lane, former girlfriend of Steve Stephens, who killed a 74-year-old man Easter Sunday in Cleveland and posted it on Facebook; and breast cancer survivor Laurie Merges.
Obviously those folks didn’t just walk in off the street for a 10 p.m. TV appearance.
A spokesman for CNN said producers conduct extensive research on key news topics to find people from the home area of the town hall guest.
“We wanted to identify stories that are relevant to the nation, but personal to Kasich,” the network spokesman said.
Not just another book tour?
Judging from various media accounts, Kasich was generally well received during the first leg of his book tour. And he managed to make a smattering of news along the way, too.
Close to 150 people crowded into a bookstore Friday in Washington, D.C., to hear him, hours after he raised eyebrows at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast by calling for the U.S. to “eradicate” North Korean leadership.
Kasich spoke Wednesday night to an overflow audience at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he told moderator David Gergen a tax plan outlined by the Trump administration earlier that day was “not a properly balanced package.”
“There’s no way you can cut all these taxes and then say, ‘OK, everything will be paid for.’ That’s like Christmas,” he said, per the Harvard Gazette.
The governor attracted a full house Thursday at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, part of Saint Anselm College near Manchester, where he made his first Granite State appearance of the 2016 campaign more than two years ago.
While the 50 books available at the gathering sold out even before he spoke, one Republican activist said there was more to the visit: “Nobody comes to New Hampshire just to sell books. ... There are all sorts of ways to sneak your way into New Hampshire and be coy about it. This is an excellent way to do it.”