Kasich focuses on his faith in D.C.

Ohio governor talks about role parents’ death had in his life.

— Former WASHINGTON Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush talked about his opposition to gay marriage. Neurosurgeon Ben Carson talked about President Barack Obama’s health care law.

But when it was Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s turn to take the stage at a Washington, D.C., conference of religious conservatives, he talked mostly about his own personal faith.

Kasich, a potential GOP contender for president, told Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition and Concerned Women for America’s “Road to Majority” conference that for years, his faith was a “rabbit’s foot” — something he’d take out for tests or, later, on Election Days.

Then came 1987 — the year a drunk driver hit his parents, John Sr. and Anne, as they pulled out of a Burger King parking lot. Both died from injuries sustained in that crash. That was the year, he said, a “storm” hit. Devastated and disconsolate, Kasich reconsidered his faith.

“I tore it all apart,” he said, saying he rebuilt his faith from the ground up. “No more rabbit’s foot for me.”

Since then, he said, his religion has been a continual wrestling match that has made him stronger.

“I think the most important thing about faith is what you do,” he said. “Not what you say.”

Kasich’s discussion of his faith — he also reemphasized his belief that the poor, the ill and the bereaved should also be cared for — was part of his attempt to lure a crowd that has tended toward skeptical.

But it was also an attempt to woo the crowd to see why he has taken the controversial stances of expanding Medicaid in his state and supporting immigration reform. Everyone, he said, “is made in the image of the Lord.

“We know we have to stand for the poor and the bereaved and the widowed,” he said, before launching into a variation of what has become a theme on the stump — that his work in Ohio has managed to both lift the economy and the poor and forgotten. “I’m thrilled we are helping people in our state who have lived in the shadows far too long,” he said.

Kasich’s speech came shortly before a bomb threat forced security to clear the hotel ballroom in a tony part of Washington, D.C. The final speaker, former New York Gov. George Pataki, another GOP presidential hopeful, was asked to speak in another room as police swept the ballroom. Participants were eventually allowed to return to the ballroom at about 3 p.m..

Kasich’s speech was greeted warmly, but not necessarily as enthusiastically as others, such as Carson, whose supporters wore T-shirts and who handed out bumper stickers and buttons saying, “I’m with Ben.” The crowd did, however, give him a standing ovation.

Kasich goes to Iowa next week — his first trip to the key caucus state since he began seriously considering a bid for president.