The day after victory in his home state of Ohio, Governor John Kasich continued his bid for the White House by holding an upbeat rally at Villanova University on Wednesday, writes Linda Stein of Daily Local News. The rally was attended by at least one Chester County commissioner.
Kasich delivered his message of down-to-earth, practical conservatism to the standing-room-only crowd of around 650 people from all over Pennsylvania, who had gathered at the Connelly Center with another 200 watching via video in another room.
Kasich spoke of reducing taxes as well as government regulations that restrain small businesses and talked about his experience in Congress, balancing the budget and helping turn around the economy in Ohio. He emphasized that the federal government needs to become leaner, calling it “tired, worn out, not responsive” and pointed that he may be the only remaining GOP contender who can beat Hillary in the fall.
Kasich loosened up the crowd with his life story. The son of a mailman and grandson of a coal miner in McKees Rocks, a small town near Pittsburgh, who managed not only to get to college, but to meet a president as well. He spoke about how as an 18-year-old college freshman, he wrote a letter to President Nixon and suddenly he was invited to the White House. He also described what happened when he called his parents to ask for a plane ticket.
“I said, ‘Mom, I’m going to need a plane ticket. The President of the United States would like to have a meeting with me in the Oval Office. And my mother was shouting, ‘Honey, pick up the phone. There’s something wrong with Johnny.’”
Kasich was told that he had just five minutes with the president, but managed to stretch it to twenty. “I didn’t come here for five lousy minutes,” he said, “The bad news is I was a congressman for 28 years and if you add up all the years I was a congressman, I peaked at 18. I should have come to Villanova.”
Kasich told the students they may be wondering what they are going to do with their lives and encouraged them to “to live a life bigger than themselves” and use their unique gifts to heal the world. “
Read more on Kasich’s Wednesday rally here.
