Moments after he placed second in the New Hampshire primary, John Kasich was transformed from a low-profile, under-the-radar candidate to the new face of compassionate conservatism in America.

Here, apparently, was the moderate Republican antidote to the domineering Donald Trump, a governor with a record of achievement, willing to rise above the fearful invective on immigration to campaign in an optimistic way about the future of the United States.

“If you don’t have a seatbelt, go get one,” the 63-year-old almost yelled as he told an enthusiastic meeting of independents and Republican centrists. “Tonight the light overcame the darkness.”

But behind the unassuming image is a track record in his home state of Ohio, where he is a second-term governor, that puts him a big step to the right of what many Americans would consider moderate.

Within hours of his success in New Hampshire, fresh legislation was passed in Ohio that will further restrict access to abortion in a state where Kasich has signed every one of a series of anti-choice measures that has ever reached his desk.

Across the state he has made an enemy of public sector unions, teachers and environmentalists with attacks on collective bargaining, cuts to funding of public schools alongside scandals in the charter school education sector, and enthusiastic support for oil and gas production via fracking – even though that has not brought as much prosperity to the state as some think.

“The people in Ohio who know him are stunned that he has been allowed to get away with calling himself a moderate,” said Sandy Theis, executive director of the liberal thinktank Progress Ohio.

“He is a climate change denier, he has had a scandal in his heavily championed support of charter schools, unemployment has gone down but poverty has risen in the state, we have a terrible infant mortality rate for African American babies – I could go on. Maybe the middle has moved so far to the right that there is no genuine moderate in the Republican race anymore,” she said.

Maybe the middle has moved so far to the right that there is no genuine moderate in the Republican race any more Sandy Theis

Sandwiched in New Hampshire between runaway winner Donald Trump and third-place Tea Party champion Ted Cruz, it is hardly a surprise that Kasich now seeks to capitalize on the mainstream appeal that charmed voters at more than 100 town hall meetings across the state.

In a Republican field where candidates are competing in tough-guy rhetoric on bombing Islamic State, building impregnable borders and barring Muslims from entering the country, Kasich’s record on many key issues is more moderate and nuanced than many of his competitors – which actually puts him at risk of being unable to attract the conservative voters as the race goes on.

Kasich does not believe in deporting illegal immigrants, providing they have been law-abiding since arriving in the US, and said Trump’s idea to ban Muslims from America would weaken the US and “is not what we are”.

And he accepted extra Medicaid dollars from the federal government distributed under the Affordable Care Act, even though he has since boasted he would “repeal Obamacare” if he reaches the White House.

Kasich fell out with the Koch brothers, rightwing mega-donors, over pointed comments he made at a fundraising event about how people needed to be accountable for what they had done for the poor when they “get to the pearly gates”.

And he consistently talks about getting things done, fixing problems and working together being more important than party politics.

He has strongly opposed same-sex marriage but said he accepted the supreme court’s decision last summer that made it legal across all states and said it was time for the country to accept that reality and “move on”.

And Kasich has acknowledged climate change – although he maintains he does not know if the actions of humankind are driving it, and he does not support action to curb emissions by regulating traditional energy producers.

“I’ve known him for many years and in that time American politics has evolved to the point where labels like moderate no longer apply in the way they did some years ago,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s center for politics.

“If you had asked me in the 90s about Kasich I would have said he was a Gingrich conservative,” Sabato said. “But even then, when Newt Gingrich was House speaker during Bill Clinton’s presidency, there were fights but they also got some things done,” he added.

Kasich was a congressman in Washington, representing Ohio, from 1983 to 2001, and worked his way up to become head of the budget committee, where he was known for reaching across the aisle to help deliver a rare, balanced budget.

After leaving Congress he became a powerful executive at Lehman Brothers, the investment bank that spectacularly collapsed under the weight of the debt it had risked as it helped to precipitate the financial collapse in 2008.

“That’s not a great thing to have on your resume, and he hasn’t really been challenged on that yet,” Sabato said.

He was voted in as governor of Ohio in 2010. As a state that is regarded as one of the most “purple” and strategically important swing states, Ohio twice chose Barack Obama and remains a state where “you won’t get elected if you are not a pragmatist”, according to Sabato.

Sabato predicted Kasich will not do well in the next contests in South Carolina or Nevada. If he can hang on through Super Tuesday on 1 March and win the primaries in Michigan and his own crucial state of Ohio later that month, however, he has his best shot of becoming a power broker in, he would hope, a contested Republican National Convention.

That could put him in a strong position to land the vice-presidential spot, which could be seen as the best possible outcome for his campaign.

The alternative scenario is that he fizzles out after his big push in New Hampshire and goes out with the label of flash in the pan. “That’s the alpha and the omega of the Kasich campaign,” Sabato said.

Between his own campaign and his Super Pac he has access to a documented $4.5m and his war chest has received a further $4m in donations since January, yet to be declared in the monthly public filings, via the political action committee.

“He clearly has a message that is resonating, and it’s resonated in Ohio for the last however many years he has been in office as governor. His message of positivity and as someone who gets things accomplished is powerful, and his is not interested in political parties, he’s interested in solving problems,” said a spokesperson, Emmalee Kalmbach.

But Kasich’s record on reproductive rights in Ohio is anything but moderate – he had signed 16 pieces of legislation into law that have severely restricted the availability of abortion services in the state.

The state government’s latest piece of legislation that passed on Wednesday takes vital funding away from Planned Parenthood.

“Under Governor Kasich, Ohio has passed 17 restrictions on women’s health, closing nearly half the abortion providers in the state,” Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, said on Wednesday after the Ohio legislature sent the latest bill to Kasich, who has 10 days to sign it.

Kasich appears to be strongly influenced by his religion and often talks about God and his personal beliefs while on the campaign trail.

He was brought up as a devout Catholic but has talked of drifting away from his faith in late youth, only to move strongly back after suffering an appalling personal tragedy.

His parents were killed by a drunken driver when Kasich was in his mid-30s, and he has talked of it profoundly changing his attitude to life, after he struggled through the initial bereavement.

It made him more empathetic, he has said, but also generated fresh religious faith in him and he joined a conservative, breakaway branch of the Anglican church in Ohio.

Ironically, this weakens his appeal both to evangelicals and progressive, moderate Christians. On the economic front, voters in Ohio overturned his attempt to restrict collective bargaining for public sector workers in 2011. Moderates may have welcomed his boost to Medicaid, but Theis, the executive director of Progress Ohio, accused him of undermining that move by vigorously cutting taxes.

“John Kasich is nowhere near as likable or as moderate as he makes out, and I think it won’t take long for that to become apparent in this campaign. He’s a flash in the pan,” Theis said.