John Kasich

Kasich, 63, was raised a Catholic but turned to a more fundamentalist brand of Christianity after his parents were killed by a drunk driver in 1987. He was born in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, but left the blue-collar town outside Pittsburgh to attend Ohio State University. As a freshman, he requested a meeting with President Richard Nixon, who obliged.

Kasich defeated an incumbent Democrat in 1978 to become the youngest person elected to the Ohio Senate, at age 26. Four years later, he was elected to the U.S. House, where he served nine terms. Kasich rose to prominence in 1997, when as House budget chairman, he became the chief architect of a deal that balanced the federal budget for the first time in decades.

A short-lived bid for president in 2000 led Kasich to trade Washington in 2001 for a decade-long stint as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers. In 2010, he narrowly defeated a once-popular Democratic incumbent to become Ohio governor.

Kasich cites his Christian faith for his pragmatic mix of policy positions — favoring income-tax cuts and smaller government while supporting Medicaid expansion under the federal health care law and certain tax increases. That’s the focus of the American Future Fund’s ad against him in New Hampshire. Says the spot: “John Kasich: Not a conservative. Not even a moderate. An Obama Republican.” Kasich says he hasn’t abandoned the conservative agenda but redefines it around core American values.

– The Associated Press