Though he won re-election as Ohio governor, meaning his second term will last through the end of 2018, John Kasich is a potential presidential hopeful for 2016. This wouldn't be the first time he has thought about running. He formed an exploratory committee in 1999 for the 2000 election but dropped out a few months later and eventually endorsed George W. Bush.
If he decides to run again 15 years later, here are six things to know about him.
1. It was clear Kasich had ambition when he was an altar boy. He wanted to be a priest, and one time a perturbed Kasich stopped a song at service to complain that the church's congregants weren't singing with enough passion. Though Kasich later was told that he had directed the congregation to the wrong page in its prayer books, his desire for success was evident at an early age. That's probably why his friends gave him the nickname Pope.
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2. His father was a respected mailman in a working-class suburb of Pittsburgh. But John Kasich Sr. wasn't about to give his son a free ride. When Kasich asked him to talk to the coach about putting him on a Little League team, the elder Kasich declined. Wrote the governor in his 2006 book, "Stand for Something: The Battle for America's Soul": "He said, 'Johnny, I’m not going to owe anybody anything. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to earn your way on to one of those teams.'"
3. When Kasich arrived at Ohio State, he forced his way into the office of the university president over a dorm citation. Then he invited himself to the school leader's meeting the next day with President Richard Nixon. That offer was declined, but the 18-year-old Kasich still managed to get a letter to Nixon in which he offered his services. A few months later, Nixon took him up on it.
4. In December 1970, Nixon invited Kasich into the Oval Office, and the two talked for about 20 minutes. Wrote Kasich in "Stand For Something": “The bad news is I would go on to spend 18 years in Congress, and if you go back and add up all the time I spent alone in the Oval Office with various presidents, you’ll see it doesn’t come close to those 20 minutes. I guess I peaked out at the age of 18. That’s when I should have retired.”
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5. Kasich likes his music, and he likes it passionately. He was once instructed to leave the stage of a Grateful Dead concert, and he once asked a 12-year-old boy if he liked Pearl Jam, one of Kasich's favorite bands. The boy said he preferred swing music. Kasich had a difficult time masking his disappointment.
6. When Kasich was running for the presidential nomination in 1999, a woman who was putting together a coffee chat for him at her home accidently ran over her dog as she ran a last-minute errand. She wouldn't let Kasich cancel the event, but Kasich stayed behind afterward, helped the woman’s husband bury the dog, and then gave the eulogy.
"I don't know if I would see the other candidates doing that,"
Linda Kaiser told The Associated Press. "When you watch them on television, they always seem so busy. He wasn't too busy.''
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