AP Photo Kasich camp revels in dirt-digging from Jeb Bush campaign dismisses research into Kasich’s Ohio record as standard fare.

Jeb Bush’s campaign contends it’s not sweating the rapid climb of Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who has emerged as his top threat in New Hampshire not named Donald Trump.

But on Monday, an intern affiliated with the Bush campaign issued a public records request to Ohio’s economic development agency for a list of all companies that have received tax credits and subsidies from the Kasich administration since July 2011.


The request, obtained by POLITICO, also seeks all correspondence between senior leaders of JobsOhio — a nonprofit economic development organization — and Ohio’s business services agency.

For the Kasich campaign, it was a chance to crow about the apparent interest from the Bush camp: “I’ll decline to say anything other than to note the Bush campaign’s growing interest in John Kasich’s candidacy,” said the Ohio Republican’s campaign manager, John Weaver. It’s in the Kasich campaign’s interest, of course, to appear on equal footing with the Bush campaign and its fundraising juggernaut.

But the Bush camp called the inquiry a fundamental and boilerplate part of modern campaigning.

“We have interns monitor the events and collect information on the records of all the candidates — including Jeb! — as standard operating procedure to have full information awareness,” said spokesman Tim Miller. “We have seen many of the same requests about Jeb under Florida [S]unshine [A]ct and emails to reporters from GOP campaigns and we would expect as much.”

“This is basic campaign due diligence in 2016,” he said. Bush aides add that Kasich’s has been among the GOP campaigns submitting information requests about Bush.

Bush and Kasich are both making a play as moderate establishment candidates who have the compassion and endurance to win not only the Republican primary but the general election. With Kasich as a late entrant to the crowded GOP field, his allies have sought to parlay a strong Republican debate performance earlier this month into a narrative about their surging trajectory. Their case has been bolstered by a climb in a recent New Hampshire poll into a statistical tie with Bush but still behind Trump.

Last week, Weaver suggested that the Bush campaign had been peddling negative stories to at least two New Hampshire reporters, a claim the Bush camp rejected as wishful thinking.