John Kasich: ‘I’m not a celebrity candidate. I didn’t have a national television show’

Ohio Gov. John Kasich says the presidential field is going to naturally winnow and give people like him more of an opportunity to get his message out.

“Look, nobody in the country knows who I am,” Mr. Kasich said in an interview that aired on CNN’s “New Day” Tuesday. “I mean, they just don’t. They know who I am in New Hampshire. But I’m not a celebrity candidate. I didn’t have a national television show. I don’t live in Washington. I’m the governor of Ohio, you know? So nobody knows me. But we do well here.”

“That whole business of being known is going to change,” he said. “You all are going to be talking about me. And then people are going to say, who is this guy? How do you pronounce his name? … it rhymes with basic. It’s Kasich, it rhymes with basic. And then hopefully things will shrink, and we’ll have more dialogue, and I’m going to do town halls all over America. I want people to question me. I want them to know me.”

He said they’ll know the morning of Feb. 10, the day after the New Hampshire primary, whether they’re a story.

“The campaigns are spending $4 million of negative ads against me — you think they’re worried?” he said. “They don’t spend $4 million [on] somebody who’s at the bottom. And then all of a sudden, you folks will be forced to shift a little bit of your attention away from the Trumper, and you might have to talk about John Kasich.”