Even as Gov. John Kasich vowed Sunday on ABC's "This Week" to not "take the low road to the highest office in the land," an independent organization backing his candidacy unleashed a TV commercial accusing New York billionaire Donald Trump of lying.

Even as Gov. John Kasich vowed Sunday on ABC�s "This Week" to not �take the low road to the highest office in the land,� an independent organization backing his candidacy unleashed a TV commercial accusing New York billionaire Donald Trump of lying.

The commercial, aired by the super-PAC New Day for America, is just one of a series of advertisements blanketing Ohio during the final days of a close race between the two Republicans in Tuesday�s presidential primary in Ohio.

The commercial was a response to a Trump TV advertisement that accused Kasich of having a hand in the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers and being a supporter of the 2010 health-care law known as Obamacare.

Trump�s commercial alleges that �Kasich helped Wall Street predator Lehman Brothers destroy the world economy,� has been �an absentee governor� and �gave Ohio Obamacare.�

Between 2001 and 2008, Kasich worked for Lehman Brothers, an investment bank whose filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September 2008 sparked a stock-market rout and contributed to the worst recession since the 1930s. But Kasich worked in a two-man office in Columbus, and no one has shown a link between him and the decisions made by Lehman Brothers in its New York City headquarters that led to its collapse.

Declaring that Kasich gave Ohio Obamacare is half right: Kasich, unlike many other Republican governors, accepted in 2013 hundreds of millions of federal dollars made available under the new law to provide health coverage to 600,000 uninsured people. The law expanded eligibility for Medicaid, the joint federal and state program that provides health care to low-income Americans.

But Kasich opposed setting up a state marketplace so that middle-income people could take advantage of federal financial help available under the law to buy private insurance policies.

As for being an absentee governor, Kasich spent most of his time in Ohio from the time he took office in 2011 until he began his presidential run in 2015, campaigning in states such as New Hampshire, Michigan, South Carolina and Illinois. It is a problem every officeholder faces when running for the presidency.

TV stations stopped airing Trump's commercial, not because of any question about its accuracy but because of a technicality: It did not include the disclaimer that it was paid for by Trump�s campaign.

New Day�s commercial responds to Trump�s attack by airing a commercial with a scary-looking photo of Trump and the narrator saying: �As polls showed Donald Trump losing Ohio, he attacked our John Kasich with unhinged, bald-faced lies.�

The commercial claims that Kasich is responsible for the creation of 417,000 jobs in Ohio as governor. The commercial also contends that Kasich cut state spending, presumably while governor.

But state spending in Ohio�s general-revenue fund has increased from $52.5 billion in the 2011-2012 budget cycle to $71.2 billion in the 2016-2017 cycle. Although a chunk of that includes the new federal Medicaid money, Kasich himself acknowledged in August on Fox News that �our budget overall is growing by about 2 percent or 3 percent� in the 2016-2017 cycle.

Even to make that argument, Kasich has to use what is known as the all-funds budget, a much larger pool of money than the general-revenue fund that includes cash the state collects through licenses and fees, plus hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants for education and the environment. Most budget experts regard the general-revenue fund as a more accurate barometer of what the state is spending.

jtorry@dispatch.com

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ccandisky@dispatch.com

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