Almost 1,000 people plopped down at least $100 apiece to hear Gov. John Kasich last night, making the annual Lincoln-Reagan dinner the biggest fundraiser in Franklin County GOP history.

Almost 1,000 people plopped down at least $100 apiece to hear Gov. John Kasich last night, making the annual Lincoln-Reagan dinner the biggest fundraiser in Franklin County GOP history.

It may not be an apples-to-apples comparison, but Democratic challenger Ed FitzGerald drew fewer than 200 on a chilly Saturday evening in February for a similar Franklin County Democratic dinner.

With "event hosts" paying $2,500 and each "table host" $1,000, the standing-room-only GOP crowd at Villa Milano probably will generate around $800,000, said Brad Sinnott, chairman of the party's central committee.

"This is a fundraiser unprecedented in this county," Sinnott said. "We had hundreds of people we weren't expecting show up at the door tonight."

Last night's theme was about as subtle as the monster plates of steaming lasagna served up to party faithful. There were hard hats everywhere emblazoned with "Kasich Works" stickers, a mock construction zone on the speaking platform, and a large campaign brochure at every seat that folded out to the shape of Ohio. The brochure read, "Ohio was broken ... 'Til John Kasich & Mary Taylor ... Put conservative values to work and started rebuilding Ohio."

Most of the governor's 45-minute talk, delivered without notes, came from his standard stump speech. But near the end, he waxed into almost a Reaganesque "Morning in America" reverie.

"The sun's coming up. Can you see it? The sun's coming up in our state. Oh, it was low. You couldn't see it at times. But now it's rising. And as it rises, and as it grows brighter, people around our country, they notice that sun. They notice those rays. They notice that warmth. It's allowing others to think about how they could be like Ohio … so we're providing the leadership, the model."

Kasich also released his second TV ad of the campaign yesterday, another unusual 60-second statewide ad that, like the first one last week, is largely biographical. The message of the new "Lift" ad sounded a lot like what he told Franklin County Republicans.

It opens with the governor giving an in-home interview about the values he's learned from his working-class parents; he used expanded versions of the same nuggets last night. Kasich has now released two more ads than then-Gov. Ted Strickland had released at this point four years ago when he ran against Kasich. FitzGerald has gone up with only a radio ad thus far.

"I am not at all surprised to see him coming out of the box this early trying to define himself," Ohio State University political-science professor Paul Beck said. "But what it may recognize is that the race, at least according to the polls, is tight, maybe tighter than it should be. The other thing is a lot of Ohioans have some major reservations of John Kasich as a person. ... He needs to soften his image."

Beck and others point to Kasich's contentious, narrow victory over Strickland four years ago, followed by Kasich's embrace of the collective-bargaining-busting Senate Bill 5 in 2011. Beck said Kasich has since identified himself as "someone looking out for ordinary Ohioans" through such policies as Medicaid expansion, but "as a candidate he is still very much anchored in the business community."

"He's in real trouble with working-class Ohioans, that's what's motivating him," said Mike Gillis, spokesman for the AFL-CIO in Ohio, a FitzGerald backer.

The FitzGerald campaign said, "In his latest ad, the governor stated that 'economic growth and prosperity shouldn't be limited to a few,' but Kasich's cuts to education and local government to fund tax breaks for the wealthy have caused taxes to go up for middle-class families, pushed educators out of jobs, and reduced services for seniors and early childhood education."

Of the Kasich campaign's ad strategy, spokeswoman Connie Wehrkamp said, "Just as Ohio has a good story to tell now, the governor has a good personal story to tell as well ... and we are going to keep telling both stories."

drowland@dispatch.com

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@joevardon