COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Gov. John Kasich is set to become the 16th notable Republican to enter the 2016 presidential race. Kasich's joins an unusually diverse Republican lineup with two Hispanics, an African-American, one woman and several younger candidates alongside older white men such as Kasich, 63, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, 62. Kasich ran for president once before, briefly seeking the 2000 nomination after he helped seal a federal balanced budget deal as House Budget chairman in 1997. Since then he put in nearly a decade as an investment executive and more than four years of strong-willed and often abrasive leadership as governor of a state that is crucial in US presidential elections. Kasich is currently lagging at the bottom of early national polls. Known for his scrappy political style, Kasich has demonstrated a willingness to buck his own party when practical. Unlike other Republican governors in the crowded presidential field, he departed from Republican orthodoxy to expand a government health care coverage program for low-income people in line with President Barack Obama's federal health care reform law. The second-term governor and former congressman declares his candidacy Tuesday at Ohio State University, where as a freshman political science major in 1970, he audaciously wrote a letter that landed him a 20-minute audience with President Richard Nixon. The man who once figuratively told lobbyists to get on his bus or he'd run them over and who called a police officer an "idiot" helped erase a budget deficit projected at nearly $8 billion when he entered office, boost Ohio's rainy-day fund to a historic high and seen private-sector employment rebound to its post-recession level. This, through budget cutting, privatization of parts of Ohio's government and other, often business-style innovations. Kasich signaled early on that he wasn't interested in piling on Hillary Rodham Clinton, the leading Democratic contender, or President Barack Obama, a commonplace ritual at Republican gatherings. Asked at a recent forum to give three reasons Clinton would make a bad president, he declined and said briskly: "If I've got to spend my time trashing people to be successful in this, you can count me out." A fixture on Sunday talk shows and at one-time a Fox News television commentator, Kasich faces an immediate challenge to qualify for the first Republican debate. That faceoff takes place next month in his home-state city of Cleveland and only the top 10 candidates in national polling will be invited. Kasich was born in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, the son of a mail carrier and grandchild of Hungarian, Czech and Croatian immigrants. In 1978, he launched his political career by defeating an incumbent Democrat to become the youngest person elected to the Ohio Senate, at age 26. — AP
