Ohio Gov. John Kasich said Tuesday it’s not enough for Republicans to just show up in black communities and tell people what they plan to do, highlighting efforts he’s made on criminal justice reform in his home state.
“OK, so you show up in the black community, right, as a Republican, and you say, ’Hi, I’m here. And I want to help you.’ And they’re like, ’What, are you kidding me?’ ” Mr. Kasich said in response to a question at an event in New Hampshire.
“So just showing up somewhere and saying ’I want to help’ doesn’t work,” said Mr. Kasich, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate. “You have to show up in the community and say, ’This is what I’ve done.’ “
Mr. Kasich said, for example, that they banned the practice of requiring felons applying for jobs in state government to check a box marking down their criminal history. Such “ban the box” efforts have gained support nationwide, including from President Obama.
“Where’d I get that from?” Mr. Kasich said. “The African-American Democrat mayor of Cleveland, who banned the box and told me about this early on.”
On recent unrest in places like Baltimore, Mr. Kasich highlighted his efforts in convening a task force on community-police relations.
“We can’t have urban unrest. We got to work at it,” he said. “The president should be doing that. We should have everybody together saying … what’s the problem here?”
“I’m not telling you we got it all figured out,” Mr. Kasich said. “Now why is it working? It’s not because of me, really. I’m just [an] orchestra conductor. It’s [because] we have good people who do good things.”
Mr. Kasich, who secured the backing of the Concord Monitor and the Boston Globe this week, is making a big push in New Hampshire, where he is jockeying for second place behind GOP front-runner Donald Trump in recent polling.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.