Daniel J. McGraw is a political writer living in Lakewood, Ohio.

A couple weeks ago, one could see the stark contrast and difficult decision facing the Republican Party in the coming year. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was on a stage at Liberty University in Virginia, formally announcing his candidacy in front of 10,000 students at a well-orchestrated tent revival of sorts. Up in New Hampshire at about the same moment, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who has not announced his candidacy for president but seems to be getting closer and closer to doing so, was learning about the latest in 3-D printing research.

He was touring Nashua Community College, where he talked about jobs, the economy and NASCAR racing. Earlier in the day he had discussed issues with voters over breakfast at another small college. The Kasich events were not much on show. They were being done, however, to showcase the new-and-improved Kasich, who many remember as the arrogant Congressman who wielded the budget axe during the Clinton years. The new Kasich tends to be more down-to-earth and less look-at-me.


"In politics, I'm not here to distinguish myself from anyone else," Kasich told the media at the community college. "You ever play golf? Play your game. Get a good score, it works. I don't ever look at what anybody else is doing. I find that when I do, my game gets worse. I don't look to distinguish myself.”

But the question for the Republican hierarchy and voters is whether John Kasich can distinguish himself in the big field of Republican presidential prospects. Is he pretty much just Jeb Bush-lite without name recognition? Is he a man who had his chance on the big stage with a short-lived 2000 presidential campaign, but might be on the Joe Biden career path if everything falls into place? Or is he the most electable Republican candidate running?

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One thing we can say for sure is that the prospects for any GOP victory in 2016 run through the Midwest. Four states that Obama took in 2012 are states that Republicans need to take for a win (or at least three out of the four): Ohio (18 electoral votes), Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (16) and Wisconsin (10). Sen. Cruz “is dead in the Midwest,” says Ohio State University political science professor Paul Beck, and adds that “Bush certainly has an appeal to independent voters, but he has been not been in office for a long time. Voters are less likely to care what he did in Florida ten years ago.”

Some are seeing Kasich as a candidate who might be able bridge the divide in the party without coming off as too moderately squishy to the far right. As in any election, independent voters are the key, and Kasich has courted them with great success during his two Ohio governor wins. His secret lies in his ability to pick up the moderates in the suburbs without upsetting the Tea Party too much. He has pushed for elimination of the income tax in Ohio and ways to balance the federal budget while also increasing taxes on cigarettes and on some businesses (a tax increase on shale and gas drillers, for example). And he seems to have done these things in Ohio with only the 10 percent on either extreme really upset.

Kasich has also deftly avoided getting in too deep with the far right in Ohio, thus avoiding the mess Indiana Governor Mike Pence finds himself in with Religious Freedom Restoration Act. He has worked with anti-abortion groups to reduce the number of clinics by requiring hospital emergency care affiliations, and that has dropped the number of clinics from 14 to eight in the past few years. But unlike Texas, the abortion fight in Ohio has been very low key and the goal has always been to reduce the number of abortions performed rather than make them almost impossible to get.

The general consensus among analysts in that no one other than Kasich, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Chris Christie can win the general election and Republican voters will eventually see the wisdom on not choosing an unelectable candidate. “The conservatives like Cruz and Paul will certainly do well in the Iowa caucuses and the early South Carolina primary, but as the primaries get into March and April, it is going to become more and more difficult for them in more moderate states,” says Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan political newsletter produced by the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

“And you can be sure that Bush and Walker and Kasich are going to let primary voters know that voting for those candidates is a waste of their vote.”

With Christie looking like he is going to stay out, it will likely be Walker and Bush and Kasich out there going after the Wall Street money and Republican middle-ground voters. Walker runs more to the right than Kasich or Bush but seems to have some difficulty being in the spotlight. His strange refusal to answer a simple question on evolution while In England a few months ago is an example of that. “The more we see of Walker, the more we see that he does not appear ready for prime time,” says Stephen Mockabee, political science professor at the University of Cincinnati.

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The primary opponent for Kasich right now appears to be Jeb Bush . Bush is already locking up piles of establishment donor funding, the same backers Kasich needs if he is to have any chance. But Bush has the legacy factor, and many conservatives did not like his brother or his father, and the anti-Bush crowd can argue that he will be a bad candidate for Republicans to pound the anti-Hillary Clinton no-more-from-that-family message.

If Kasich gets in the race, he will have a decent record to run on. He has reduced taxes on small businesses, taken a state that had an $8 billion budget deficit when took the governor’s office in 2011 to a $1.5 billion surplus today. His record is about job creation mostly—and though some of his programs have had minimal success and suffered a lack of transparency with regard to some publicly-funded corporate hand-outs—he won 86 out of 88 Ohio counties in November (admittedly, against a poor Democratic candidate) because his administration has stopped most of the Rust Belt economic bleeding in Ohio.

Like Bush, Kasich will take heat for his support of common core and immigration reform (though he is seen by most as less supportive than Bush was in Florida). But the big issue facing Kasich—especially in the primaries—is his bringing the Medicaid expansion to Ohio. The expansion moved the qualifying income for Medicaid in Ohio from $24,250 for a family of four to $32,500. That added more than 450,000 to the Medicaid rolls in Ohio in 2014.

Ohio’s Medicaid expansion passed in 2013 when Kasich bypassed the state legislature and used a procedural loophole by punting it to the state Controlling Board, which is permitted to adjust the state budget each year. This prevented a full-on and very partisan debate in Columbus, which many Republican legislators privately were thankful for. Kasich has also stayed away from right-to-work legislation, in part because Ohio voters in 2011 overwhelmingly overturned a state law that would limit collective bargaining by public employees. Sources say Kasich is staying away from the right-to-work issue because it doesn't play very well with middle-of-the-road Republicans and independent voters.

Kasich sold Medicaid expansion as a necessary step to help the poor and get them out of routinely going to the very expensive emergency room for basic care. “Now, when you die and get to the, get to the, uh, to the meeting with St. Peter, he’s probably not gonna ask you much about what you did about keeping government small, but he’s going to ask you what you did for the poor,” Kasich said. “Better have a good answer.”

When asked by some potential donors at a private New York diner in late March about Medicaid expansion being another government handout for the poor, including the non-working, drug-addicted population, Kasich did not budge on his position.

"Maybe you think we should put them in prison," Kasich answered according to news reports. "I don't. I don't think that's a conservative position. Because the reality is, if you don't treat the drug addicted and the mentally ill and the working poor, you're gonna have them and they're gonna be a big cost to society. I think rehabbing them, getting them on their feet, training them and getting them jobs, is a conservative position."

Analysts know how Kasich putting more people on the federal health care rolls will play with other candidates in the primaries. He will be railed constantly. Gov. Scott Walker will opine, “I had a chance to side with Obama and I didn’t.” But University of Harvard school of Public Health professor Robert Blendon expects the issue is going to be less and less important with voters deeper into the primary season.

“First he can explain that he expanded an existing program so that the hospitals were not being stuck with an outrageous bill for their charity care, and how people are paying an excessive amount on their own policies to cover that” Blendon says. “He can separate the Affordable Care Act from expanded Medicaid. He can say he supports helping the less fortunate with better care while also stating that he does not support government mandates to tell people what kind of heath care they need to have.”

Still, that is an uphill battle. “I think with Medicaid expansion, Kasich fits into that niche that Jeb Bush is already in—and to a lesser extent Walker—and they both might have to stumble for him to move ahead of them,” UVA’s Kondik says. “But there is a lot of time for stumbles.”

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The attribute Kasich brings that the academics and numbers crunchers are not seeing right now is the appeal of his personality to independents. When he was in Congress (serving eight terms from 1983 to 2001), his budget battles earned him high marks among party insiders, but he often came off as smart-assed in public.

“Kasich just seems more friendly and comfortable now,” says a Democratic consultant who didn’t want his name used. “And the public will go for that. Walker seems stiff and always too careful about what he says. Jeb seemed very uncomfortable onstage with Sean Hannity and trying to be someone he’s not at the [Conservative Political Action Conference] last month. Kasich has changed into someone that has a personality that is at least sincere and genuine.”

Mike Gonidakis, president of the Ohio Right to Life, agrees that Kasich has an air of comfort with himself and his views that has real voter appeal. “Most voters get turned off by cute Fox News one-liners and politicians who view themselves as stage actors more than down-to-earth leaders,” Gonidakis says. “Gov. Kasich doesn’t check every conservative box, but we’ve been able to work with him quite well because he is able to convey a genuine concern. And he is the same in private meeting as he is when giving public speeches. Same guy.”

In some respects, Kasich’s political career is similar to Bush 43. George W. Bush worked in his father’s administration as the one who fired people and acted as his father’s attack dog. No one at that time thought Bush had any political character that voters might latch on to. But after his father’s defeat to Bill Clinton in 1992, he headed back to Texas and headed up the group of investors that bought the Rangers' MLB franchise. As part of that job (the group was lobbying for a publicly-funded new stadium which they eventually got), Bush appeared on sports talk radio and at team functions and showed that he could be a fun guy.

That personality change was a big reason he won the governor’s race against Anne Richards in 1994, and he did it in part by out-charming one of the most wily and personality-driven politicians ever. Most think he would have never had a chance if he hadn’t become more comfortable in public as a baseball owner.

After leaving Congress in 2001, Kasich removed himself from the partisan political game by becoming a political commentator and show host on Fox News, an investment banker with Lehman Brothers and by working in the business public speech circuit. Kasich told Men’s Health magazine in 2003 that the public speaking gave him more clarity. “Tell people what you know,” he told the magazine. “Tell people what you care about. Just tell them.”

It is that experience that puts Kasich much further in front of Walker if the race was just being decided on likability.

“Kasich might be the best Republican candidate for the general election,” says Ohio State’s Beck. “He connects with voters very well. But he has to get through the primary to get there. I think six months ago we would have said he is a real longshot. But as time goes on, the field narrows, and he seems to be gaining more traction as an alternative to Bush or Walker, who have will their own voter preference problems.”

Kasich is certainly acting like he is running. But he is avoiding events that might cause problems with the moderate suburban Republicans he seems to be gearing his message towards. For example, Kasich chose not to attend the National Rifle Association's annual convention in Nashville this past weekend—he and Rand Paul were the only potential GOP presidential candidates not there. Instead, Kasich made time for a speech on Monday at the Detroit Economic Club, where he emphasized job creation and the problems of political infighting caused by what he called “namby pamby, poll-driven” decision-making.

But while skipping the NRA convention, he is returning to New Hampshire and South Carolina this weekend (April 17th and 18th), and will be among the speakers at the First in the Nation Republican Leadership Summit in New Hampshire, a can't miss for any GOP presidential hopeful. Also speaking at the New Hampshire event are Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Scott Walker among many others.

Of course Kasich just has a few hoops to jump through. He has to start raising money from donors who have already aligned with Jeb Bush. Walker and Bush have to stumble a bit. And he is going to have to withstand Cruz and his cohorts portraying him as a friend of Obama. At this point, not easy. But looking more and more like it might be possible. Key word is might.