Kasich touched on the same theme during an April appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press when he said Wall Street “is necessary because it helps move the financial operations of America forward. But I’ll tell you the problem with Wall Street: It’s too much about, ‘I’ve got to make money.’ There’s too much greed.”
With his attacks on Wall Street, Kasich joins a growing number of elected officials who are taking aim at Wall Street, a populist strategy that could appeal to middle-income voters. But he is also inviting attention to the money he earned at Lehman Brothers, whose collapse in 2008 precipitated the worst financial crisis in the United States since the Great Depression.
There is no evidence Kasich’s actions at Lehman Brothers had anything to do with the firm’s collapse. But he has only allowed reporters to inspect his 2008 federal tax returns as opposed to all the years he worked at Lehman Brothers.
His 2008 returns, made available to reporters in 2010 when he ran for governor, showed he made nearly $1.4 million in salary and bonuses from Lehman Brothers that year. Reporters could not copy the returns, but only take notes as they reviewed the documents.
At the time, Kasich campaign officials said his 2008 returns would have been similar to those for other years, with Scott Milburn, then a campaign spokesman, saying in 2010, “I’m sure the bonuses did go up and down based on his performance.”
Chris Schrimpf, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party, said when Kasich “talks about fixing broken government and getting things done, he’s speaking from experience — whether it’s working in D.C. to balance the budget or eliminating the deficit in Ohio.”
“The same is true when he criticizes Wall Street,” Schrimpf said. “He’s also speaking from his first-hand experience of what he’s seen — not grandstanding for headlines.” Schrimpf said Kasich “has always fully-disclosed his finances as required by law and even went beyond the legal requirements in 2010.”
Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia, warned Kasich’s approach might backfire much like it did in 2012 when former House Speaker Newt Gingrich attacked the business record of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
“There were a lot of Republicans who resented Gingrich’s attacks because it seemed like an attack on business and people who work in the finance industry,” Kondik said. “This is not the first time that Kasich has seemed to call out people with whom he is otherwise ideologically compatible for what can best be described as moral deficiencies.”
In an interview published last month in the Columbus Dispatch, Kasich would not say if he would make any other returns public should he officially enter the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. By contrast, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has pledged to release 10 years of federal income-tax returns.
“We’ll see,” Kasich said in the Dispatch interview. “Those are decisions to be made. I’m not a candidate yet.”
The likely candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination — former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland — have all highlighted attacks on Wall Street.
But while they all have called for restrictions even tougher than the 2010 financial regulation overhaul known as Dodd-Frank, Kasich said at the April conference in Washington that the law “went overboard.”
During his CNN interview, Kasich said “there’s nothing wrong with making money.” But he warned that “you can’t just be totally dedicated to making money without, you know, sort of doing some good in the process.”
Darrel Rowland of the Columbus Dispatch contributed to this story.
About the Author