Mitch Perry
Two Republicans who have never held elected office — Ben Carson and Carly Florina — are set to officially declare their candidacy for the GOP nomination for president on Monday. Carson will do it in his hometown of Detroit; Fiorina reportedly will just issue a statement, although though she will appear in an interview with Katie Couric on Yahoo later Monday to elaborate on why she should be the next POTUS.
Both candidates face heavy odds, which is why some analysts think they may both be vying ultimately being considered for vice president.
Most intriguing is another Republican with a very long record in office who has yet still to pull the trigger but may do so soon: Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
“I’m a normal guy in a big job, and I tell it like it is,” Kasich said on Fox News Sunday when asked whether he has the discipline to run for president.
Kasich made a lot of noise and received a lot of attention as U.S. House Budget chairman in the 1990s, and briefly was a candidate for president in 2000, the year George W. Bush won the nomination. Kasich now talks about how green he was then, and how more seasoned he is after being out of politics for a decade before his election as Ohio’s governor in 2010.
“You know, I tried this thing 16, 17 years ago,” he said Sunday on Fox. “And I didn’t even have any money to put in the car to drive our SUV around. But it’s a little bit different this time. I feel like the message is working of bringing people together. The results here in Ohio give me, I think, a lot of credibility for our team to be able to move forward. And we’ll know over the course of the next few months, we think we’re off to a pretty good start. And we’re going to see how it goes. You know, and if it goes great, I’ll be happy. If it doesn’t go great, I’ll be disappointed. But, you know, I’ll get over it. But at the end of the day, I feel pretty optimistic about things.”
It sounds like he’s running, which means he doesn’t think the Big 3 — Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker — have a lock on the nomination.
Like Bush, Kasich’s potential bipartisan appeal as a general election candidate might hurt him in a primary, but he ridiculed host Chris Wallace‘s contention that he could be considered too moderate for Republican Primary voters.
“Well, you know, I won — I won 86 out of 88 counties in Ohio with almost 64 percent of the vote. I got the conservative vote. I received 51 percent of union households, 60 percent of women and 26 percent of African-Americans. You want to be president? You better win Ohio. And, you know, what we’ve been able to do in Ohio with job growth, with tax cuts, the largest in the country, and a history of balancing budgets, Chris, I mean, I think it’s hard to question my conservative credentials. But I will tell you this, as a conservative, I believe that economic growth is a means to an end — we should help — is not a means to an end, but should be used to help people to rise and be lifted. And that’s what all Americans want. Whether they’re Republicans or Democrats.”
While Kasich tours the country and considers a candidacy, yet another former Republican governor who has run for president before — Mike Huckabee — will get into the act Tuesday when he officially announces his candidacy.
