Former Lehman Bros executive Kasich eyes 2016 and knocks Wall Street 'greed'

The full-to-bursting roster of Republican presidential aspirants expanded again over the weekend after John Kasich, the governor of the crucial swing-state of Ohio, laid the groundwork for a run on the White House with an unusual attack on Wall Street.

The moderate conservative, frequently tipped by Republican insiders as vice-presidential material, made his ambitions for the top job clear with trips to the early primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina on Saturday, followed by an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.

The governor, a former congressman, stopped short of announcing his formal his entry into the presidential race on the show – as he did in 1999, before an extremely short-lived first run for the White House. But he made clear he was formulating a presidential campaign that would tack to the left of the current field of Republican candidates.

A managing director at Lehman Brothers before its collapse in 2008, Kasich, 62, lampooned Wall Street bankers in terms more usually associated with the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren.

“Wall Street is necessary because it helps move the financial operations of America forward, but I’ll tell you the problem with Wall Street: it is too much about ‘I gotta make money’,” Kasich said. “There’s too much greed. And that’s just part of what happens there.

“I think on Wall Street most of the bankers have to fight off the concept of greed, because you know what they say all the time up there? They say, ‘Am I going to get paid? What is my big bonus gonna be?’ Nothing wrong with that. But here’s the problem: if all you seek is money without values, then you’re bankrupt.”

He added: “So what I think is that our banking community needs to realise is there’s a moral underpinning.”

Kasich has reportedly created New Day for America, a tax-exempt nonprofit – a precursor to the launch of the presidential exploratory committee that, one GOP source said, he will formally announce as soon as next week.

“I have more experience than anybody in the field,” he told NBC. “I don’t just talk about what I would do. I can talk to people about what I have done.”

Asked about the comparison between his unsuccessful run against George W Bush in 2000 and the need to overcome the second Bush president’s brother, Jeb Bush, this time around, Kasich quoted the baseball legend Yogi Berra: “It could be déjà vu all over again.”

Jeb Bush is currently considered a frontrunner in the race, alongside Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. Yet neither has formally declared a presidential bid, and neither has succeeded in pulling away from a second-tier bunch of candidates including senators Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.

Kasich is a moderate figure cut from similar political cloth as Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey who is failing to revitalise his own presidential prospects and lags far behind in polls.

All of the above were in New Hampshire over Friday and Saturday, along with virtually every other Republican presidential hopeful. The contest is so crowded that few in the party can give a definitive answer about precisely how many presidential contenders there are – let alone name them all. There were, for example, 19 possible presidential contenders in Nashua for the Republican Leadership Summit. Most focused their fire on Hillary Clinton, the only declared Democratic candidate so far.

“We’re blessed as Republicans; we have a strong field of quality people that are running,” Rubio, the Florida senator who formally entered the race this week, told CBS on Sunday. “The Democrats are struggling to find one. We have eight or nine. And I think we are going to be a better party for it.”

View image in fullscreen

The alternative view of the Republican contest is that it is at risk of turning into a circus, with a plethora of aspirants, few of whom stand any chance of winning the nomination – never mind the White House – damaging the reputation of the GOP as they drag the party to the right.

Kasich, who was frequently talked about as a presidential nominee last year but then faded from view, almost pleaded with Republicans in Nashua not to forget him.

“Think about me, would ya,” he told them. “Don’t commit too soon.”

On paper, Kasich is a candidate with good credentials in a general election, although there are doubts he is conservative enough to win over the Republican base. He won re-election to the governor’s mansion in Ohio last year with the kind of overwhelming majority rarely enjoyed in statewide elections.

Ohio is a crucial battleground state that has backed every successful presidential candidate since 1968. A fiscal hawk, Kasich has carved out a reputation as a pragmatist, even crossing the Rubicon for Republican governors to expand Medicaid subsidies under a provision of Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, the Affordable Care Act.

Such moves are akin to blasphemy among the party’s conservative factions. When Kasich appeared at an event in Greenville, South Carolina, on Saturday, flyers were affixed to nearby vehicles warning: “John Kasich Pushing Obama’s Agenda.”

Kasich, who said repeatedly over the weekend that his final decision over whether to run by president would be guided by God, appeared unperturbed by the attacks from the right of his party. Instead he warned against the influence of extremists in the party whom he called “dividers”.

“People want to divide with fiery rhetoric and attacks and all of that,” he told NBC. He added: “I’m not so much into the attack mode and all that other business. I’m into solving problems.”

Kasich added it was time to “stop hanging out in our silos thinking that we’ve got all the answers without realising that you can compromise without losing your principles”.