John Kasich

John Kasich

John Richard Kasich Jr. (born May 13, 1952) is an American politician, author, and television news host. He served as the 69th Governor of Ohio from 2011 to 2019. He is a Republican and unsuccessfully sought the party’s presidential nomination in 2000 and 2016. After leaving Congress, Kasich hosted Heartland with John Kasich on Fox News from 2001 to 2007 and was a fill-in host for The O’Reilly Factor.

About John Kasich in brief

Summary John KasichJohn Richard Kasich Jr. (born May 13, 1952) is an American politician, author, and television news host. He served as the 69th Governor of Ohio from 2011 to 2019. He is a Republican and unsuccessfully sought the party’s presidential nomination in 2000 and 2016. After leaving Congress, Kasich hosted Heartland with John Kasich on Fox News from 2001 to 2007 and was a fill-in host for The O’Reilly Factor. He also worked as an investment banker, serving as managing director of the Lehman Brothers office in Columbus, Ohio. Kasich is one of the most prominent critics of Donald Trump within the Republican Party. He declined to challenge him in the 2020 presidential primary, and endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in a speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention. Kasich’s father was of Czech descent, while his mother was of Croatian descent. Both his father and mother were children of immigrants and were practicing Roman Catholics. He has described himself as \”a Croatian and a Czech\”. Kasich left his native Pennsylvania in 1970 to attend The Ohio State University, where he joined the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity. In 1982, Kasich ran for Congress in Ohio’s 12th congressional district, which included portions of Columbus as well as the cities of Westerville, Worthington and Dublin. He won the Republican primary with 83% of the vote and defeated Democratic incumbent U.S. Congressman Bob Shamansky by a margin of 50%–47%. He would never face another contest that close, and was re-elected eight more times with at least 64 percent of vote.

During his congressional career, Kasich was considered a fiscal conservative, taking aim at corporate tax loopholes. He was a key figure in the passage of both 1996 welfare reform legislation and the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Kasich decided not to run for re-election in 2000, instead running for president. He withdrew before the Republican primaries. In the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, Kasich finished third behind Donald Trump and Ted Cruz at the convention. He subsequently received one Electoral College vote from a faithless elector in Texas. Kasich was term-limited and could not seek a third gubernatorial term in 2018; he was succeeded by Mike DeWine. In 2019, he joined CNN as a contributor. He is the son of Anne and John Kasich Sr, who worked as a mail carrier. In 1978, he ran against Democratic incumbent Robert O’Shaughnessy for State Senate. At age 26, Kasich won with 56% ofthe vote, beginning his four-year term representing Ohio’s 15th district. In 1980, he was the second youngest person ever elected to the Ohio Senate. One of his first acts as a State Senator was to refuse a pay raise. Kasich went his own way, for example, opposing a budget proposal he believed would raise taxes and writing his own proposal instead. In the general election he voted for John McCain as a write-in candidate. In 2010, Kasich defeated Democratic challenger Ed FitzGerald by 30 percentage points.