Manchester, N.H.
John Kasich is touring the headquarters of Dyn, a Manchester-based cloud computing support firm with big-name clients like Netflix, Amazon, and Pinterest. It’s a run-of-the-mill campaign stop—Rand Paul visited the company earlier in the year—except with Kasich, nothing’s ever run-of-the-mill. Before his entourage knows what’s happened, the Ohio governor is making a beeline for the foosball table.
An old warehouse along the banks of the Merrimack River houses Dyn’s offices, which have a Silicon-Valley-meets-New-England vibe. Employees walk around in shorts and untucked shirts. The company provides free sandwiches every Tuesday. There’s a putting green downstairs, and a foosball table is occupied by four workers. Kasich nudges one aside to get in on the game and almost immediately knocks a goal in. The employees are impressed, and Kasich, sensing he should quit while he’s ahead, walks away just as quickly as he came.
“You guys need to practice more!” he shouts back as he returns to the tour.
Pundits often refer to Kasich’s “unique” personal style, which is a polite way of saying the Ohio Republican is a little weird. For one thing, he constantly makes fun of voters. During the tour, he keeps referring to one of Dyn’s vice presidents as “Ted Cruz,” because he looks a little like the Texas senator. He also makes sure to stick it to a bunch of Boston sports fans in the company’s sales department. “I heard the Red Sox are going to finally start playing baseball again,” he says to groans. Kasich is prone to tangents, as when he stops at the putting green to sink a ball and then instructs the gathered executives and journalists about the proper way to swing a golf club. He almost hits a TV camera with a driver. Twice.
Kasich’s boyish grin can’t always hide his 63 years. During a discussion with a large group of Dyn’s twenty- and thirtysomething employees, he notes the recent uptick in heroin and other drug abuse in New Hampshire. “We’ve just gotta fight this. We’ve gotta get into our friends’ faces and force them to rehab. Because the next thing you know, they could be dead,” he says. “Talk to your friends about drugs.” Thanks, Dad.
Despite his awkwardness, Kasich is charming, and it’s an important part of why he could disrupt the New Hampshire primary and the race for the Republican presidential nomination. When he formally declared his candidacy on July 21, Kasich had yet to poll above 3 percent in national surveys and was barely registering in polls of New Hampshire Republicans. The announcement gave him enough of a boost in national polls to catapult Kasich into the first primary debate on August 6. According to the Real Clear Politics average of New Hampshire primary polls, Kasich is in fourth place, behind Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, and Scott Walker and ahead of Chris Christie and Rand Paul.
Kasich is positioning himself as a hybrid of Bush and Christie: a conservative who cares about those in need and a tough-talking, hardnosed problem solver. He often touts his work crafting balanced budgets in the 1990s as the chairman of the House Budget Committee, and he says he supports a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. “We don’t have the right to live high on the hog and leave the bills to our children,” said Kasich at the August 3 New Hampshire Union Leader candidate forum at St. Anselm College. So far, he’s treated his biggest liability in the GOP primary—his enthusiastic expansion of Medicaid in Ohio, offered by Obamacare—as an asset.
“I’m really glad I did this, because there are people’s lives who’ve been saved as a result of it,” Kasich told a group of voters in Greenland, New Hampshire, last month.
Kasich has Bush in his sights, though he won’t admit it. The former Florida governor has frequently promised on the trail to deliver 4 percent economic growth as president. At the August 3 forum, Kasich took what sounded like a swipe at Bush, saying “I think that economic growth is not just an end unto itself,” before calling for Republicans to reach out to Americans living “in the shadows.” The next day, speaking with reporters, he shook his head at the suggestion he was targeting Bush. “I was trying to figure out how anybody thought I was doing that,” said Kasich. “It wasn’t a slap at anybody.”
Will the nice guy routine last? Kasich’s path to the nomination requires him to cut into Bush’s support, and to do so in New Hampshire. He’s visited the state nine times this year, including twice since he declared his candidacy. Kasich may be on his way to endearing himself to New Hampshire voters, but he’ll have to challenge Bush directly before the February primary.
Kasich’s position is reminiscent of Jon Huntsman’s in 2012. The former Utah governor’s chief strategist John Weaver, a veteran of the John McCain political operation, is now a Kasich adviser. Like Kasich, Huntsman positioned himself as an alternative to the Republican establishment favorite, then Mitt Romney. The Huntsman campaign eventually moved its entire operation to New Hampshire in recognition that the state was a must-win. But Romney was practically a resident of New Hampshire, and in the end, Huntsman didn’t even come close.
The good news for the Ohio governor is that Bush is not as strong in New Hampshire as Romney was, and Kasich’s a much better campaigner than Huntsman. That won’t be enough, but it’s a start.
Michael Warren is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.
