Ohio Governor Defies G.O.P. With Defense of Social Safety Net

Politics

Ohio Governor Defies G.O.P. With Defense of Social Safety Net

 

Ty William Wright for The New York Times

Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio said of fellow Republicans in Washington, "I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor."

By TRIP GABRIEL

Published: October 28, 2013 

COLUMBUS, Ohio — In his grand Statehouse office beneath a bust of Lincoln, Gov. John R. Kasich let loose on fellow Republicans in Washington.

“I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor,” he said, sitting at the head of a burnished table as members of his cabinet lingered after a meeting. “That if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.”

“You know what?” he said. “The very people who complain ought to ask their grandparents if they worked at the W.P.A.” 

Ever since Republicans in Congress shut down the federal government in an attempt to remove funding for President Obama’s health care law, Republican governors have been trying to distance themselves from Washington. 

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin schooled lawmakers in a Washington Post opinion column midway through the 16-day shutdown on “What Wisconsin Can Teach Washington.” Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, with a record of bipartisan support at home, remarked after a visit to the nation’s capital, “If I was in the Senate right now, I’d kill myself.” 

But few have gone further than Mr. Kasich in critiquing his party’s views on poverty programs, and last week he circumvented his own Republican legislature and its Tea Party wing by using a little-known state board to expand Medicaid to 275,000 poor Ohioans under President Obama’s health care law.

Once a leader of the conservative firebrands in Congress under Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, Mr. Kasich has surprised and disarmed some former critics on the left with his championing of Ohio’s disadvantaged, which he frames as a matter of Christian compassion. 

He embodies conventional Republican fiscal priorities — balancing the budget by cutting aid to local governments and education — but he defies many conservatives in believing government should ensure a strong social safety net. In his three years as governor, he has expanded programs for the mentally ill, fought the nursing home lobby to bring down Medicaid costs and backed Cleveland’s Democratic mayor, Frank Jackson, in raising local taxes to improve schools. 

To some Ohio analysts, those moves are a reaction to the humiliating defeat Mr. Kasich suffered in 2011 when voters in a statewide referendum overturned a law stripping public employees of bargaining rights. Before the vote, Mr. Kasich’s approval in this quintessential swing state plunged. 

Now, as the governor’s image has softened, his poll numbers have improved heading into a re-election race next year against the likely Democratic nominee, Ed FitzGerald, the executive of Cuyahoga County. 

He still angers many on the left; he signed a budget in June that cut revenues to local governments and mandates that women seeking an abortion listen to the fetal heartbeat. Democrats see his centrist swing as mere calculation, a prelude to a tough re-election fight. 

“This is someone who realized he had to get to the center and chose Medicaid as the issue,” said Danny Kanner, communications director of the Democratic Governors Association. “That doesn’t erase the first three years of his governorship when he pursued polices that rewarded the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.” 

Ohioans earning in the top 1 percent will see a $6,000 tax cut under the latest budget passed by the Republican-led legislature, while those in the bottom fifth will see a $12 increase, according to Policy Matters Ohio, an independent research group. 

The governor dismissed the notion that his Medicaid decision was political. “I have an opportunity to do good, to lift people, and that’s what I’m going to do,” he said. “You know what?” he added, using a phrase he utters before aiming a jab. “Let the chips fall where they may.” 

The son of a mailman who grew up outside Pittsburgh, Mr. Kasich (pronounced KAY-sik) has said he didn’t meet a Republican until he arrived as a freshman at Ohio State. He has often showed an independent streak. He supported President Bill Clinton’s assault weapons ban while in Congress in 1994, and he teamed with Ralph Nader to close corporate tax loopholes. 

In the interview in his office, he criticized a widespread conservative antipathy toward government social programs, which regards the safety net as enabling a “culture of dependency.” 

Mr. Kasich, who occasionally sounds more like an heir to Lyndon B. Johnson than to Ronald Reagan, urged sympathy for “the lady working down here in the doughnut shop that doesn’t have any health insurance — think about that, if you put yourself in their shoes.” 

He said it made no sense to turn down $2.5 billion in federal Medicaid funds over the next two years, a position backed by state hospitals and Ohio businesses. 

Yet, at the same time Ohio under Mr. Kasich refused to run its own state insurance exchange as encouraged by the health care law, known as the Affordable Care Act. The governor said he did not believe that the law, which mandates that people buy insurance, will work. To the contrary, he said, “It’s going to throw people out of work and not control costs.”  

Expanding Medicaid, which became an option for states after the 2012 Supreme Court ruling upholding the health care law, is different, Mr. Kasich asserts. The governor argued all year that extending eligibility beyond poor mothers and children to include childless adults earning up to $15,860 will help thousands of the mentally ill and drug-addicted. 

The governor, whose brother is mentally ill, spoke of how Medicaid would get more people into treatment, decreasing the homeless and prison populations.

“For those who live in the shadows of life, for those who are the least among us,” Mr. Kasich said in a February speech, echoing the Bible, “I will not accept the fact that the most vulnerable in our state should be ignored.” 

In some ways, his balancing act has scrambled the usual ideological alliances. A Wall Street Journal editorial last week mocked his religion-based explanation for expanding Medicaid and labeled him “the Apostle Kasich.” 

But mental health groups that usually find Democrats more sympathetic are cheering. “It’s been an astonishing thing to watch,” said Terry Russell, executive director of the National Alliance for Mental Illness in Ohio. “Since he’s become governor we’ve received more for mental health care than any time in the past 20 years.” 

Still, the governor got nowhere with the legislature, where Republicans hold majorities in both houses and many conservatives are rankled with his half-embrace of Mr. Obama’s law. The right flank had dealt him an earlier defeat, refusing a proposal to raise taxes on oil and gas companies and use the money for an income tax cut — which Tea Party supporters called redistributing wealth. 

Ohio’s legislative districts have been drawn to create safe seats, a dynamic that increasingly pulled the General Assembly to the right. “So many of these legislators are really concerned about a Tea Party challenge,” said John C. Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron. 

The Ohio Liberty Coalition, a network of Tea Party groups, threatened a primary challenge to any lawmaker supporting the governor on Medicaid expansion. 

“We said, You’re supposed to be about limited-government and free markets, and we’re here to hold you accountable,” said Ted Stevenot, president of the Tea Party coalition. 

As a result, Medicaid expansion never came up for a vote in the General Assembly. The budget that lawmakers sent the governor in June even prohibited the expansion of Medicaid. But Mr. Kasich vetoed the item, and last week he did an end-run through a special committee known as the Controlling Board, which approves day-to-day adjustments to the budget. 

He also used his leverage to stack the board in his favor. A senior member of the Kasich administration acknowledged in interviews that it pressed Republican leaders of the legislature — the House speaker and Senate president — to assure a majority of “yes” votes on the board. 

Hours before the vote on Oct. 21, two “no” votes were replaced with other members, one of whom voted for expansion, increasing the margin in favor to 5-2. “The fix was in,” said one disgruntled Republican in the House, Representative Matt Lynch. 

Tea Party leaders acknowledge that Mr. Kasich won the round. Although some grass-roots activists may refuse to help him next year, he seems unlikely to face a serious primary challenger on his right flank. “Our governor’s numbers among Republicans are very good,” said Matt Borges, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party. 

The governor cast a cold eye on hard-liners in his party, especially in Washington. “Nowhere in life do we not compromise and give,” he said. 

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 31, 2013

An article on Tuesday about a decision by Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio to defy his party by defending social programs and expanding Medicaid under President Obama’s health care law misstated the final vote of the Controlling Board, a little-known state board used by Mr. Kasich to push through the expansion. It was 5 to 2, not 7 to 2.

A version of this article appears in print on October 29, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Ohio Governor Defies G.O.P. With Defense of Social Safety Net.