The Boston Globe publishes a good 770 miles from the Ohio governor’s mansion. It’s also not the New York Times.
So why is former Ohio Gov. John Kasich writing op-eds in it?
The Globe is the largest newspaper in New England, with a circulation stretching into the critically important political state of New Hampshire. These two facts make the most recent op-ed from Kasich especially interesting. He just penned a piece honoring Martin Luther King Jr. in the Boston Globe. He fueled that much more speculation about when, not if, he will mount a primary challenge against President Trump in the process.
The piece will be unobjectionable to most. Kasich slings stones at the incivility playing out in the capital city, flings some arrows at the problems plaguing Middle America, and proposes community answers to national problems.
“If we can help just one person to be better,” Kasich writes, “we can change the entire world. And when we work together as a community to meet this challenge, who knows what we can accomplish?”
The bigger question is whether Kasich wants that community to work together to make him president. He has spent the last two years of his term as governor openly mulling whether or not to take another shot at the White House.
If Kasich were doing anything else, Kasich would have likely pitched his MLK remonstrance to any of the Ohio papers. He could have run it in the Plain Dealer or the Cincinnati Enquirer or the Columbus Dispatch. Each fine papers, but none has a readership in New Hampshire.
Kasich finished second in the Granite State in the 2016 Republican primary. A good way for the governor to finish better in that state is to get his name in front of those voters early. So when will he announce?
[Also read: Trump, Pence make unannounced visit to Martin Luther King Jr. memorial]
