COLUMBUS — Gov. John Kasich said he feels sorry for those who suspect political design in his championing of issues that have one by one removed bricks from what three years ago looked to be a wall of opposition.

“A question like that takes the breath out of me,” Mr. Kasich told The Blade during a recent interview on the campaign trail.

In 2012, following voters’ rejection of a Republican-passed law restricting the bargaining rights of public employee unions, a Quinnipiac poll showed more voters than not believed he didn’t deserve a second term and wanted to see another Republican challenge him in the primary.

But then he bucked fellow Republicans to successfully push for expansion of Medicaid and defied expectations of deep budget cuts to social services. The latest Quinnipiac poll this month had him up 22 points over Democratic challenger Ed FitzGerald.

“We’re doing that because everybody in the state needs to benefit and rise,” Mr. Kasich said. “When people are hungry, you want to feed them. They have mental illness, you want to treat them. If they’re addicted to drugs, first of all you want to keep them from getting addicted, and once they are, you’ve got to help them to get off of it.”

“This is not unusual,” Mr. Kasich said. “This is stuff you do because it’s the right thing to do.”

During his nearly four years in office, Mr. Kasich — a former Columbus-area congressman, state senator, Fox News political show host, and regional director for failed Lehman Brothers — has enacted a series of income tax cuts. He created a private nonprofit corporation to negotiate economic development deals, borrowed against the Ohio Turnpike to finance road projects off the toll road, and slashed funding to local governments to help balance the state’s books.

He continues to push for an increase in taxes on expanding horizontal oil and natural gas drilling in the state.

He is again running with Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor.

‘Ohio Miracle’

The case Mr. Kasich most frequently makes for his re-election is Ohio’s economic performance over the last four years.

He didn’t coin the term of “Ohio Miracle,” but he repeats it often.

“When I came in, we were just getting slaughtered economically in the state,” the governor said. “We were down 350,000 jobs, and now we’re up almost a quarter of a million. We were $8 billion in the hole, and now we’re running a $1.5 billion surplus. I don’t know how anybody would figure out how that’s a bad story.”

Ohio’s unemployment rate in September was 5.6 percent, below a national average of 5.9 percent. But the nation as a whole recently recovered the jobs lost during the recession while Ohio remains about 100,000 short.

Mr. FitzGerald argues that Mr. Kasich has presided at a time when the nation has been in recovery mode.

“How can John Kasich run almost exclusively on a platform from 2010 that he should be elected because we were underperforming the rest of the country and that, if he was elected, we were going to outperform the rest of the country when, by any objective, economic measure that’s been conducted by an academic institution, or respected economist, we are trailing the rest of the country,” he said.

“We’re trailing the rest of the country in terms of rebounding from the effects of the recession, ranked about 41st in the country,” he said. “It’s not working.”

Mr. FitzGerald’s interview with The Blade appeared on Sept. 21.

‘Promised land’

Mr. Kasich often talks about discovering the “promised land” when he first visited Ohio as a child. That visit took place in Vermilion, and Lake Erie features heavily in the story.

He was back at Lake Erie in early August, but this time it was in response to Toledo’s water crisis brought on by toxic algal growth fueled by phosphorous runoff into the watershed.

“That lake had not been properly maintained for a long time,” he said. “When you’re not taking care of stuff, no matter what you’re doing now to improve the conditions, you’ve got the possibility of something happening that you really hate to see.”

“We spent about $1 billion on that lake,” Mr. Kasich said. “It does involve the phosphorous, the runoff from the fields. ... But it’s not just Ohio. It’s Indiana, Michigan, Ontario [Canada], all these things in combination with runoff from agriculture. Septic systems, some of which fail 100 percent. Now we think we’re going to have some money to help some of these folks be able to fix their septic systems.”

But don’t look for an immediate legislative crackdown on farmers’ application of manure to address the fertilizer runoff issue. Lawmakers are expected to pass a bill later this year, but the real focus will remain on voluntary participation by farmers until new licensing rules take effect for chemical fertilizers in 2017.

Taxes

Expect more income tax cuts in his next budget due next year, assuming he’s re-elected. During his tenure, he has cut income taxes across all brackets but primarily with the goal of dragging down the top bracket rate.

That top rate has gone from 5.925 percent in 2011 to 5.333 percent in 2014, but he wants the cuts to continue.

“The closer we can get to zero, the happier I’ll be,” Mr. Kasich said. “The states that have the lowest taxes are the ones that are growing the fastest in our country.”

When confronted by Democrats’ contention that the broad personal income tax cuts disproportionately benefit the wealthy, Mr. Kasich points to the creation of Ohio’s first earned-income tax credit for low-income earners, which was added to the current budget and later expanded.

Democrats point to increases in the state sales tax that helped to offset the impact of the income tax cuts, as well as cuts in local government funding that they argue have translated into property tax hikes.

“There’s a philosophical debate that’s gone on in this country with people who say having high taxes is really good versus those people who say if you can lower taxes you can provide the incentives for growth,” Mr. Kasich said. “Growth is what lifts everybody. I happen to be a pro-growth guy, not a high-tax guy.”

Labor

Mr. FitzGerald and fellow Democrats insist Mr. Kasich will at last acquiesce to a GOP effort to make Ohio the latest “right to work” state if he’s re-elected. Bills are pending in the General Assembly to prohibit the automatic collection of “fair share fees” in lieu of dues from private and public-sector employees who benefit from but refuse to join workplace unions.

Mr. Kasich characterized the current labor-management atmosphere in Ohio as “positive.”

“So when people try to bring up right-to-work ... it isn’t even anything we discuss because we have good relations between labor and management. I’d just like to see that continue. ... My position is clear. ... The legislature isn’t going to pass right-to-work.”

Faith

Mr. Kasich grew up in McKees Rocks, an industrial city in Pittsburgh’s shadow. He moved to Columbus to attend Ohio State University and stayed. He and his wife, Karen, have twin teenage daughters.

He has written about the evolution of his faith after the death of his parents in an automobile accident involving a drunken driver in 1987. He brings it up often when he talks about obligations to take care of the mentally ill and drug-addicted.

“When you’re in a situation where you know that life is short, that your role here on Earth is hopefully to be a healing agent, you don’t worry too much about politics,” he said. “You’re just so confident to do what you know is the right thing that can help someone to do better.”

And he knows where he stands on the contentious issue of abortion rights.

He has signed into law several measures passed by his Republican colleagues restricting access to abortion services, most notably a provision requiring abortion clinics to have emergency-care agreements with local hospitals.

One Toledo clinic has closed because of the new regulation, and another is fighting a shutdown order from the state in court.

“I didn’t write them into the bill, but I’m pro-life,” Mr. Kasich said.

Contact Jim Provance at: jprovance@theblade.com or 614-221-0496.

First Published October 19, 2014, 4:13 a.m.