Kasich and Murdock:Million dollar transaction among pals

IF YOU HAVE ANY doubt about where John Kasich's million-dollar loyalties lie today, would the name Rupert Murdoch help you in your decision? As it is being widely reported, the masterful megamedia owner of News Corp., whose holdings include Fox News, has found a way to inject $1 million into the Kasich campaign for governor in Ohio. He did so with a convenient channel passing through the Republican Governors Association. From there it was a simple conversion to Kasich's political ads.

Kasich, who is forever glib about his work-room lifestyle, will doubtless pass it off as nothing more than a casual over-the-back fence relationship with Murdock. He's done the same for questions involving his handsomely paid work for Lehman Brothers, the bankrupt Wall Streeters. It should be obvious that in politics, Kasich is not a cheap date.

If these ties to the vast powers of the corporate world don't inspire confidence in Kasich's glowing vision of Ohio's future, you obviously haven't followed Fox's equally inspirational takeover of the Republican Party. (But wait: A Kasich spokesman told the Columbus Dispatch that his candidate didn't really solicit the contribution. I feel much better about it now.)

Murdoch obviously had an eye for Kasich's talent when the candidate showed up from time to time as a substitute commentator for Bill O'Reilly, the Fox News marquee conservative.

Murdoch has also contributed a million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been bashing any Democrat to the left of Herbert Hoover. He said he just wanted the Chamber to know tha he was trying to be a good member. But according to a report in the blog Politico, he confessed that he thought the contributi0n "would not become public knowledge."

How fair and imbalanced!

Meet John Kasich: 4 hours a month OSU lecturer

THERE WAS A letter to the editor in Sunday's Beacon Journal in which Bryan C. Williams, the executive vice chairman of the Summit County Republican Party executive committee, questioned whether Gov. Strickland, a Democrat, was fit to serve in the office. Among other things, he accused the guv of being a "hypocrite" and insisted that John Kasich would "do much better" if elected in November.

Well, I normally would ignore such official inbred partisanship from either side except this was a special case.

If Williams had fast forwarded to the BJ's Community Page, he might have had second thoughts - no, he probably wouldn't have! - when he played the hypocrite card.

There, plain enough, was a long piece recovered from the Dayton Daily News , that told of Kasich's particular ATM-style income that cost Ohio State University thousands and thousands of dollars with very little effort on his part other than to maybe buy a bigger wallet.

You need only to read the first two paragraphs by the paper's bureau chief, Laura A Bischoff , to find the real hypocrite in the room:

"As a candidate for governor, Republican John Kasich has called on colleges and universities to cut costs and force professors to teach more courses.

"Yet for seven years, Kasich served as a "presidential fellow" at his alma mater, Ohio State University, in a role that paid him the equivalent of $4,000 per campus visit." (OSU also paid Kasich's political friend $2,000 a visit as the candidate's aide.}

So for seven years, from the winter of 2002 to May 2,009, he picked up an easy $50,000 a year in hard-earned taxpayer money (a favorite term of the the tax cutters like Kasich) while his buddy got $20,000 - no questions asked by the university about what it was that Kaisch might be doing on its campus. Clue: He was a guest lecturer on several topics including finance and psychology while "serving as a panelist at banquets and forums." The Dayton News also noted that he once gave an ethics lecture to dental students.

Even Kasich admitted that he only worked on the campus four hours a month which, for all we know, might have included an appearance as Alfred Einstein.

But hold it right there. Richard Stoddard, President Gordon Gee's special assistant, defended the payments to Kasich, saying "we have a lot of positive feedback." Pro forma.

I should say. Kasich is a wonder. Always has been - even in the days when he chaired the House Budget Committee on Capitol Hill and quietly worked up a plan that would hit the poor the hardest. David Hess, the Knight-Ridder reporter on the Hill at the time, managed to get a copy of it before it had become public knowledge and wrote a national story revealing its contents that appeared in many papers, including the Beacon Journal. Hess recalls that Kasich never talked to him after that.

But such additions to the Kasich profile - from Congress to Lehman Brothers to an honored spot on Fox News to OSU - begin to create a candidate who never knows that what goes around can come around. It would help if he would stop insisting on cutting back the cost of education as one who contributed to the red ink. You can fool some of the people some of the time........

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John Kasich: Haunted by Lehman Brothers

The Columbus Dispatch has become the newspaper of record in its coverage of this year's Ohio political campaigns. Last week it reported the Republican Senatorial Committee internet ad that showed a bare-chested Lee Fisher, with a strong implication that he was turning his lower torso into a playground. And today's paper reported that John Kasich, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, had "tried to persuade two state pension funds in 2002 to invest with Lehman Brothers," the now belly-up investment bank, while he was on Lehman's payroll as its managing director in Columbus.

It identified the funds as the Ohio Police and Fire Pension Fund and the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System. Fortunately for them, they didn't take the bait. Had they entered a deal with Lehman, they would have lost many millions of dollars. A Kasich spokesman has shrugged off his candidate's role in all of this, saying only that he arranged some meetings with other Lehman representatives and vanished from the scene.

Whatever Kasich's involvement, it's now quite evident that Gov. Strickland's reelection campaign will raise Lehman from its bankrupt burial site on Wall Street to haunt Kasich throughout the remainder of the campaign. That's one haunt where your investment would be safe.

Will Tea Party dump Ohio GOP overboard?

A FUNNY THING is happening to the Ohio Republican Party on its avowed fail-safe way to sweeping the Democrats in November. Despite its cordial attempts to play nice with the Tea Partiers, the Republican team is finding that wishing won't make it so. N o less a party celebrity than Ohio GOP chairman Kevin DeWine extended an olive branch to the Tea Party in a visit to Akron last week, inviting the outriders to come through the front door to join the state party.

But by Sunday, the Plain Dealer was reporting the latest collision between State Sen. Jon Husted, the Republican candidate for secretary of state, and Ralph King, the leader of an outfit called the Cleveland Tea Party Patriots. For whatever reason - and you don't need many these days to stake out an opponent - King & Co. don't like Husted. Worse than that, as King explaind to the PD reporter, "The only relation Jon Husted would have with the Tea Party is if he would have been driving the British ship into Boston Harbor." Safe qualifier. Even Google couldn't put Husted on that British ship. Besides, King accused Husted of showing "open hatred and contempt for the Tea Parties." Husted, of course, denied it.

There will be a lot of this sort of political auto de fe as the Tea Partiers flex their muscles, or whatever, this year, and Republican candidates are spending more time genuflecting to them than demanding that they stop telling lies. As matters now stand, the state GOP ticket is leaning heavily to a detente with the enemy.

John Kasich, the candidate for governor, has spoken at their rallies while trying to fend off Democrats' charges that he is tainted by being a white collar manager for Lehman Brothers up to the time that it went bankrupt. (Curiously, he has defended his years of employment with the big bank by suggesting he was little more than a walk-on each day - a claim of low-level servitude that seemed contradictory to his bonus of $432,200 in 2008 on top of his salary of $182,692!)

Rep. Seth Morgan, a very conservative GOP candidate for state auditor, has been endorsed by the State Tea Party; auto dealer Tom Ganley, challenger to Democratic U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton in the 13th congressional district, has appeared at Tea Party rallies; and U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine,who wants to be attorney general and should know better, has announced that his first task upon entering the office would be to file suit to repeal the health care reform law - and what Tea Partier would be against that?

As political campaigns go, this year's will be more irrational than ever. Don't be surprised if there are some surprises over in the Republican camp.

How do you get a job like this?

FROM THE DECEMBER issue of Harper's Index:

"Projected amount that lawyers and other advisers will earn from the bankruptcy proceeding of Lehman Brothers: $1,398,000,000"

That's nearly $1.4 billion, folks! Even these days, life can be beautiful on Wall Street.