Kasich says he can unite Americans as president

DAVENPORT, Ia. — Ohio Gov. John Kasich is describing himself as an independent-mind reformer who can unite the country and help make life better for the American people.

Kasich, a former nine-term congressman who helped to balance the federal budget in the late 1990s as chairman of the House Budget Committee, spoke Wednesday to about 200 people at St. Ambrose University. He decried other presidential candidates who engage in "yelling and screaming" while pontificating about their views, although he declined to point any fingers at his competitors in the crowded field of Republicans.

“We need to stop listening to all the whining and complaining and bombast and figure out who is going to get the problems fixed,” he said.

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Kasich pointed to his overwhelming re-election victory as governor in 2014 as evidence of his popularity and he predicted he can win Ohio’s critical electoral votes in the 2016 presidential election. He carried 86 of Ohio’s 88 counties in his last gubernatorial campaign.

He said people voted for him in Ohio because they felt he was listening to them and because he fixed the state’s finances and helped to create jobs while caring for all the state's residents, including the poor. He vowed to do the same in Washington, D.C.

“I know how to fix that town. I know how to balance budgets. I know how to rebuild the military. … I know how to get people together,” Kasich said.

Kasich said he’s always been a reformer, pointing to his efforts to rewrite Ohio’s state budget while he was a legislator in his 20s and his push to reform Pentagon spending as a congressman.

But he also said bipartisanship is necessary in Washington, adding that President Barack Obama was wrong in passing the Affordable Care Act without Republican support.

“If you had a marriage where nobody gave, you wouldn’t be married. Life doesn’t work that way,” he said.

Both Democrats and Republicans who attended the Davenport forum complimented Kasich afterward.

Mary Hamann of Maquoketa, a retired school teacher and a Republican, said she’s heard nine GOP presidential candidates and she was impressed with Kasich. “What I like is that he said what he would do instead of attacking the other candidates. Attacking others does nothing for me,” she said.

Robert Luchetta-Stendel, 18, a St. Ambrose freshman and a Democrat, said he would consider voting for Kasich for president. “He’s not like other Republican candidates. He talked several times about reaching across the aisle,” the student said.

Kasich spoke later Wednesday at a town hall meeting in Cedar Rapids where he said he favored returning some federal programs back to states, including education and welfare. But he also said he favored "significantly increased funding" on medical research, including research on Alzheimer's and pancreatic cancer.

When a woman referred to the devastating 2008 floods that struck Cedar Rapids and asked his stance on climate change, Kasich said he believes climate change is occuring. However, he added that Americans shouldn't "worship the environment" and he doesn't favor extreme actions that will cost people their jobs. He also described himself as a free trader, but he has concerns about foreign countries dumping products in the United States that hurt American companies.

"When people cheat and we lose jobs, that's baloney," he said.

ABOUT THE EVENTS

SETTINGS: Rogalski Center at St. Ambrose University in Davenport and the Iowa Startup Accelerator in Cedar Rapids, which helps new tech-based businesses.

CROWDS: About 200 people in Davenport. About 130 in Cedar Rapids

​REACTION: Favorable at both events. He was applauded in Davenport when he finished and both Republicans and Democrats in the crowd said afterward they liked his bipartisan focus on getting work accomplished in Washington, D.C. He also got a big round of applause after speaking in Cedar Rapids.

WHAT'S NEXT: This was Kasich’s fifth trip to Iowa, and each has been a one-day visit, although this was the second time he's been in Iowa in five days.