Ty William Wright for The New York Times
Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio said of fellow Republicans in Washington, "I'm concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor."
COLUMBUS, Ohio — In his grand Statehouse office beneath a bust of Lincoln, Gov. John R. Kasich let loose on fellow Republicans in Washington.
"I'm concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor," he said, sitting at the head of a burnished table as members of his cabinet lingered after a meeting. "That if you're poor, somehow you're shiftless and lazy."
"You know what?" he said. "The very people who complain ought to ask their grandparents if they worked at the W.P.A."
Ever since Republicans in Congress shut down the federal government in an attempt to remove funding for President Obama's health care law, Republican governors have been trying to distance themselves from Washington.
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin schooled lawmakers in a Washington Post opinion column midway through the 16-day shutdown on "What Wisconsin Can Teach Washington." Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, with a record of bipartisan support at home, remarked after a visit to the nation's capital, "If I was in the Senate right now, I'd kill myself."
But few have gone further than Mr. Kasich in critiquing his party's views on poverty programs, and last week he circumvented his own Republican legislature and its Tea Party wing by using a little-known state board to expand Medicaid to 275,000 poor Ohioans under President Obama's health care law.
Once a leader of the conservative firebrands in Congress under Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, Mr. Kasich has surprised and disarmed some former critics on the left with his championing of Ohio's disadvantaged, which he frames as a matter of Christian compassion.
He embodies conventional Republican fiscal priorities — balancing the budget by cutting aid to local governments and education — but he defies many conservatives in believing government should ensure a strong social safety net. In his three years as governor, he has expanded programs for the mentally ill, fought the nursing home lobby to bring down Medicaid costs and backed Cleveland's Democratic mayor, Frank Jackson, in raising local taxes to improve schools.
To some Ohio analysts, those moves are a reaction to the humiliating defeat Mr. Kasich suffered in 2011 when voters in a statewide referendum overturned a law stripping public employees of bargaining rights. Before the vote, Mr. Kasich's approval in this quintessential swing state plunged.
Now, as the governor's image has softened, his poll numbers have improved heading into a re-election race next year against the likely Democratic nominee, Ed FitzGerald, the executive of Cuyahoga County.
He still angers many on the left; he signed a budget in June that cut revenues to local governments and mandates that women seeking an abortion listen to the fetal heartbeat. Democrats see his centrist swing as mere calculation, a prelude to a tough re-election fight.
"This is someone who realized he had to get to the center and chose Medicaid as the issue," said Danny Kanner, communications director of the Democratic Governors Association. "That doesn't erase the first three years of his governorship when he pursued polices that rewarded the wealthy at the expense of the middle class."
Ohioans earning in the top 1 percent will see a $6,000 tax cut under the latest budget passed by the Republican-led legislature, while those in the bottom fifth will see a $12 increase, according to Policy Matters Ohio, an independent research group.
The governor dismissed the notion that his Medicaid decision was political. "I have an opportunity to do good, to lift people, and that's what I'm going to do," he said. "You know what?" he added, using a phrase he utters before aiming a jab. "Let the chips fall where they may."
The son of a mailman who grew up outside Pittsburgh, Mr. Kasich (pronounced KAY-sik) has said he didn't meet a Republican until he arrived as a freshman at Ohio State. He has often showed an independent streak. He supported President Bill Clinton's assault weapons ban while in Congress in 1994, and he teamed with Ralph Nader to close corporate tax loopholes.
In the interview in his office, he criticized a widespread conservative antipathy toward government social programs, which regards the safety net as enabling a "culture of dependency."
Mr. Kasich, who occasionally sounds more like an heir to Lyndon B. Johnson than to Ronald Reagan, urged sympathy for "the lady working down here in the doughnut shop that doesn't have any health insurance — think about that, if you put yourself in their shoes."
He said it made no sense to turn down $2.5 billion in federal Medicaid funds over the next two years, a position backed by state hospitals and Ohio businesses.
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