Ohio Gov. John Kasich sought to inspire a college audience at the University of Richmond on Monday. The presidential hopeful told the crowd of his chance encounter with President Nixon at the White House as a college freshman at Ohio State in order to spark the Richmond students’ own imagination.
“Dreams come true, hard work matters, prayers matter, shoot for the stars, that’s the way life is,” Kasich said. “In my lifetime, I have been struck by lightning many times and I have been very appreciative of it. I was a state senator at 26, I knew nobody and it was a miracle election. I went to Congress at the age of 30 and had a absolutely incredible time for 18 years.”
Despite all of his time in public life, however, Kasich lamented that some people just don’t seem to understand him and his need to be a troublemaker.
“This is why some people just don’t get me: Economic growth is not an end unto itself,” Kasich said. “So we were able to take economic growth and then spread a message that no one should be left behind, no one should have to live in the shadows. If you’re mentally ill we want to treat you and help you.”
“Everybody is not made this way, but I was kind of made to be a troublemaker. And it’s one thing to be a troublemaker, but it’s not enough to be a troublemaker if you can’t get things accomplished. You don’t want to be a clanging bell in life.”
Kasich, who fell to tenth in the Washington Examiner‘s most recent power rankings, trails six Republican candidates in New Hampshire, according to a new NBC News/Marist poll. Kasich has spent much of his time campaigning traveling through the Granite State, and super PACs supporting his campaign have spent more than $5.3 million on televised ads in New Hampshire since July. Whether Kasich’s precipitous drop from the top three in the latest New Hampshire poll is an outlier or not remains to be seen, but he has work ahead of him to make sure he does not become a “clanging bell” on the trail.
