You guys give Kasich too much credit. He may seem temperate but he is rabidly anti abortion, and is known for being (and I'm quoting a republican congressman here ) "A sanctimonious prick who throws a massive hissy fit at the slightest sign of disagreement." He'll work on bipartisan stuff with the Dems, but he'll be every bit the warmonger Hillary or Bush would have been. And he'll only work on bipartisan stuff when he needs to bribe or pander to someone. He's gutted social programs in the state (as well as education), and tried to gut unions but stopped when he got backlash from police and firemen. He was one of the key architects of clintons welfare "reform". He was at Lehman brothers during the economic fall. He supports fracking in public parks or land, the Keystone XL, privatized prisons, etc. He and the republicans rabidly opposed marijuana legalization, defeating it by focusing on the idea it enshrined a monopoly into the state constitution. They then made a big show of passing a law forbidding monopolies being created by the voters or private entities, while quietly omitting that it allows the state to create monopolies enshrined in our constitution with no public input or participation. Suddenly, medical marijuana is being loudly put on the track to approval by republicans, who are not mentioning that it's a constitutional monopoly directly benefiting their donors. He continues to gut public schools while funneling their money to charter schools that have no oversight, many of whom have been open frauds, sexually or physically abusive of children, or performed well below our already shitty public school level of performance.
He balanced the budget by eliminating all state aid to local, city or county governments, all of whom had to raise taxes to make up for the loss. He just shifted the tax burden from stater gummint to local. Farmers were told a few years back their property taxes would double. Last year they doubled again, and they were warned they'd double again in the near future. He didn't balance the budget so much as use sleight of hand to disguise what was happening until e has another office. He seems moderate, but since the election he's become much less so to pander to people who would never vote for him in the first place. He supports abolishing the 14th amendment and making citizenship a revocable privilege as opposed to a right. He hates public transportation and has fought tooth and nail to oppose any being built while attempting to take apart what we already have. He constantly tries to curtail voting or in some way fuck with the voting laws to the extent there are multiple lawsuits every single year.
Even the local republicans hate him. He got elected with Tea Party support, and basically promptly told them "I got elected, fuck you, I don't need you anymore". Moderates don't like him either because his ideology is less "conservative" and more "do what I say or I'll fuck things up till you see it my way." The farmers hate him, the police and firemen hate him, the teachers hate him, social conservatives and tea party conservatives hate him, liberals of all kinds definitely hate him. If he wins re-election it will be by a very slim margin. He's pissed off enough people Ohio could go blue again in 2018, if for no other reason than the tea party and libertarians have vowed to support anyone but him, even if that someone is a democrat, after he got their last candidate kicked off the ballot in the primary last election season.
