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Strickland: Kasich didn't tell the truth in Tampa

Former Ohio governor Ted Strickland said he won't mention the man who beat him for re-election, Gov. John Kasich, by name in his speech tonight to the Democratic National Convention, but told WVXU he will "straighten out the falsehoods" he says the GOP governor uttered.

"I'm not going to talk about Kasich,'' Strickland told WVXU in an interview late Monday afternoon in the lobby of the Hilton at University Place hotel, one of two hotels the Ohio delegation is using in Charlotte. "All Kasich did was talk about himself."

"But I am going to set the record straight,'' said Strickland, who was defeated for a second term by Kasich in 2010. "I plan on correcting the things that he said that simply aren't true."

In Kasich's speech to the Republican National Convention in Tampa last week, the present governor said that Ohio was 38th in the nation in job creation when he took office in Jan. 2011; and is now fourth in the country.

"That's just not true,'' Strickland said. "When I left office, we were sixth in the nation in job creation.

"The fact that Ohio's economy has rebounded has nothing to do with John Kasich, or with Ted Strickland, for that matter,'' Strickland said.

He credits two major actions of the Obama administration with improving Ohio's economy to the point where it is about one percentage point below the national average in unemployment - the federal stimulus package passed by Congress in 2009 and the Obama administration's bailout of the auto industry, which Strickland said helped save a state where nearly one in eight jobs is related to auto production.

"The federal stimulus package is what helped me be able to fund K-12 education, hold down college tuition, and invest in infrastructure,'' Strickland said. "That stimulus package helped me keep Ohio from falling into an even deeper recession."

In 2009, Strickland and the the legislature used federal stimulus money to plug the budget shortfall.

Strickland said, too, that he is contemplating another run for governor in 2014.

"Yes, I'm thinking about it,'' Strickland said. "I'll probably make a decision by the end of the year."

Howard Wilkinson is in his 50th year of covering politics on the local, state and national levels.