Soft and Cuddly? John Kasich’s Old Colleagues Don’t Recognize Him
As he tries to halt the momentum of Donald J. Trump, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio tells people they are made special by the Lord. He urges them to invite lonely widows out to dinner. He freely dispenses hugs.
Mr. Kasich’s aura of civility, kindness and positivity is so pronounced — and so at odds with the fulminations of the real estate mogul — that an anxious voter in Worcester, Mass., wondered whether he could summon the combativeness required to be an effective president.
“I worry that you’re just so nice,” the woman said.
Mr. Kasich’s colleagues in Ohio and Washington do not share that worry.
In interviews, they recall a three-decade career in government punctuated by scolding confrontations, intemperate critiques and undiplomatic remarks.
Today, as Mr. Kasich makes comity a centerpiece of his long-shot bid for the Republican nomination, they describe his candidacy as an exercise in remarkable self-restraint that has managed to keep his crankier instincts mostly out of sight.
The John Kasich of 2016 is a much mellower politician than the hard-charging congressman of the 1990s, who could be so difficult that House Speaker Newt Gingrich, never known for his diplomacy, offered Mr. Kasich firm advice about his tendency to bulldoze colleagues.
“I talked to him a lot about unlocking people rather than running them over,” Mr. Gingrich recalled, adding of his counsel, “I think some of that actually stuck.”
But not all of it. In Ohio, Mr. Kasich is known for flashes of impatience, anger and disdain. A police officer who pulled him over? An “idiot,” Mr. Kasich said (though he later apologized). Lobbyists? Farm animals with “their snouts in that trough,” in his words. Out of-state rivals? “Wackadoodles.”
But not all of it. In Ohio, Mr. Kasich is known for flashes of impatience, anger and disdain. A police officer who pulled him over? An “idiot,” Mr. Kasich said (though he later apologized). Lobbyists? Farm animals with “their snouts in that trough,” in his words. Out of-state rivals? “Wackadoodles.”
“We see a completely different side of him,” said Lou Gentile, a Democratic state senator. Mr. Gentile recalled Mr. Kasich pulling him aside after a news conference and unspooling a vigorous grievance about how Democrats had not supported a proposal he had championed.
“I literally said, ‘Governor, governor, can I please get a word in here?’ ” Mr. Gentile said.
These days, Mr. Kasich presents himself as a soothing and unifying figure who can heal a broken country. The approach seems to be working, to a degree: A poll this week showed him catching up to Mr. Trump in Pennsylvania, and national surveys suggest he would make a stronger rival against a Democrat in the fall than the divisive Republican front-runner.
At the Ohio Statehouse, however, Mr. Kasich could be impetuous and unforgiving.
As a Democratic state representative in a Republican-dominated legislature, Denise Driehaus recalled joking to Mr. Kasich at a bill-signing ceremony that she might never again find herself at such an occasion.
Mr. Kasich, she said, did not react well. In a reply that left her startled, he shot back that her statement was the problem with Democrats: They would not work with Republicans. The room grew tense, she said, and the celebratory mood was lost.
“It was overly aggressive,” she said. “He just wouldn’t let it go.”
Mr. Kasich’s volatility crosses party lines — and it has earned him a reputation for moodiness that has left even Republican allies treading lightly around him.
Jay Hottinger, a Republican state senator, summed up the challenge of working with Mr. Kasich in a recent text message to his wife. Mr. Hottinger, a veteran legislator, had attended one of the governor’s campaign stops in Ohio not knowing whether to expect warmth or chilliness from Mr. Kasich.
To his relief, Mr. Kasich acknowledged Mr. Hottinger’s presence at the event and embraced him afterward. “It was Dr. Jekyll today instead of Mr. Hyde,” Mr. Hottinger texted his wife.
“Anyone who’s been around Governor Kasich knows that it depends on what kind of mood you catch him in,” Mr. Hottinger said.
Several of the governor’s allies and adversaries said they were watching the newly genial Mr. Kasich, as a presidential candidate, with bewilderment.
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“I think a lot of people are kind of scratching their heads saying, ‘Where did this John Kasich come from?’ ” said Fred Strahorn, the Democratic minority leader in the Ohio House.
Republican voters who attend his campaign events said his conciliatory approach was a major lure, setting him apart from the taunting and caustic style of his rivals Mr. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
“He’s the anti-Trump,” said Bradley Oberling, 62, who went to see Mr. Kasich in the Chicago suburbs recently. “He just seems like a real gentleman.”
Even with such admiration, Mr. Kasich has so far managed to claim only one victory, in his home state. But for those keen on defeating Mr. Trump, like Dave Shurtleff, a salesman from Wheaton, Ill., Mr. Kasich is emerging as a refreshing political balm. “He’s not the wacko, name-calling type,” Mr. Shurtleff said. “From that point of view, he seems presidential.”
To hear Mr. Kasich tell it, he has indeed changed, attributing it to a revival of his Christian faith and to his role as a mature chief executive, rather than a young Republican rebel.
“As I’ve gotten older and more faithful, I probably have mellowed a little bit,” he said not long ago.
He recalled his days as a House member in less than flattering terms.
“When I was in Congress,” he said, “I spent my whole life with a battering ram, trying to knock down the walls of the city to get what I wanted. Now that I’m the governor, I now run the city.”
Mr. Gingrich, still a friend from the two men’s days waging what they saw as a Republican revolution, has a different explanation for the transformation: Mr. Kasich, after years of being single, married again in 1997.
At the time, the congressman and his wife, Karen, announced that they would honeymoon in a place where “the skies are blue, the temperatures are warm and the words ‘budget negotiations’ are never spoken.”
Mr. Gingrich noticed a difference right away. “When I started working with him, he was pretty lonely, and it was pretty tough,” he said.
Of course, Mr. Kasich has long relied on a soft touch to blunt his biting impulses, a disarming and potent combination, according to those who have experienced it. Alex Fischer, a Republican who heads the Columbus Partnership, a business group in Ohio, remembered a long, heated disagreement with Mr. Kasich over policy during his 2010 campaign for governor. As both the temperature and the volume rose in the small conference room where the episode played out, Mr. Fischer feared the conflict could permanently damage their rapport.
But as they prepared to part ways, Mr. Fischer said, Mr. Kasich put his arm around him and declared, “You and I are going to get along really well.”
Still, Ohio lawmakers and political operatives privately wonder if — or when — the old, irascible Mr. Kasich will reappear under the stress of a presidential campaign.
“He has shown great discipline,” said Chris Redfern, a former state representative and onetime Ohio Democratic chairman who still remembers Mr. Kasich’s pungent admonition to the state’s entrenched interests a few years ago.
“If you’re not on the bus, we will run over you with the bus,” Mr. Kasich said then, adding, “I’m not kidding.”
Mr. Kasich seems sensitive to the possibility of a relapse, even warning reporters who travel with him to be on guard. After snapping at a journalist over an unwelcome question this month, Mr. Kasich apologized, and at a news conference later he asked for the news media’s help in monitoring his behavior.
“If any of you ever see me getting out of control, I want you to take me aside and I want you to say, ‘Remember what you told us at that press conference,’ ” he said.
Such assurances notwithstanding, Mr. Kasich is not ready to forsake his abrasive side entirely, holding it in reserve for the right moment.
“I think nice usually wins,” he said after the event in Worcester last month where the voter had worried about his congeniality.
But not always.
“Most people have a sense that when the time comes to fight,” he said, “I’ll fight just fine.”
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