John Kasich of Ohio on 2016: ‘I’m not the governor of a tiny little state’

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress, said “all my options are on the table” when asked about a possible presidential run in 2016.

“In Ohio, we have an incredible thing going out there … balanced budgets, we’re running surpluses, the largest tax cuts in the country, we’re up almost 300,000 jobs,” he said Tuesday on Fox News. “And I want people to hear what we’re doing in Ohio, and I want them to hear how we’re doing it — [we’ve] got another massive budget out there, it’s controversial — there’s all kinds of things.”

“It’s exciting when you want to do things — it’s not exciting to just sit back,” he said.

Mr. Kasich has been making the rounds in a handful of states recently to try to drum up support for a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution and recently made a trip to the early presidential state of South Carolina.

“All my options are on the table — I have not decided what I’m going to do, and as one of the guys who once thought about running for president told me, you figure it out on your own,” he said. “You use your own timetable. Pay no attention to all these people who are experts out there.”

“And look — I am the governor of Ohio, you know? I’m not the governor of a tiny little state. It really matters,” he said.

“You’re an Ohio boy,” he said to anchor Bill Hemmer. “You know the sway that we have.”

The Republican National Committee is holding its 2016 convention in Cleveland, and the critical swing state has supported the winning presidential candidate in every election since 1964.